


Every moment we're alive is absurdity

by lonelyspaghetti



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Alternate Universe - Detectives, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Roommates/Housemates, F/M, Modern Thedas, Romantic Comedy, Roommates, the writer could not help herself
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-09-14
Updated: 2018-11-30
Packaged: 2018-12-29 21:54:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 30,197
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12094200
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lonelyspaghetti/pseuds/lonelyspaghetti
Summary: He needed a roommate, she needed a fresh start. Perfect strangers in a perfect setup... what could go wrong?





	1. Prologue: Gizmo Search

**Author's Note:**

> welcome to the shit show.

_Gizmo search 3:31 PM Cities in Ferelden_  
_Gizmo search 3:34 PM Denerim expensive_  
_Gizmo search 3:36 PM Denerim apartments_  
_Gizmo search 3:40 PM Redcliffe expensive_  
_Gizmo search 3:41 PM Redcliffe apartments_  
_Gizmo search 3:43 PM Redcliffe jobs_  
_Gizmo search 3:50 PM South Reach_  
_Gizmo search 4:00 PM South Reach apartments_  
_Gizmo search 4:02 PM South Reach roommate_  
_Gizmo search 4:10 PM South Reach jobs_

* * *

ListMate ad: 5x3 townhome seeking female roommate $700/mo  
ListMate ad: 2x2 apt seeking male roommate MUST COOK $500/mo  
ListMate ad: guest house for rent, chores for room and board ***3 CHILDREN***  
ListMate ad: 2x1 apt seeking any roommate $400/mo  
ListMate ad: married couple seeking a third M/F open-minded

ListMate: Find the perfect roommate!  
AD: 2x1 apt seeking any roommate $400/mo

male, 30, spare room for rent. Sporadic hours, clean, nonsmoker, large dog (service trained retriever, well-behaved). Room is furnished. One bathroom, washer/dryer in unit, free covered parking. On bus route to SRSC. Cable/int. paid, asking to split water/gas/elec.

Pics of the space available upon request.

Text inquiries to Cullen @ 202-0166

_Gizmo search 6:51 PM South Reach area code_

* * *

(+07) 304-8534 : Hello, is this Cullen from the ListMate ad?

 **(+11) 202-0166 :** Yes

(+07) 304-8534 : ok hi! South Reach has like three area codes and I tried all of them  
(+07) 304-8534 : anyway I’m interested in the space?

 **(+11) 202-0166 :** Figured as much, tell me about yourself  
**(+11) 202-0166 :** this is an Ostwick number, correct?

(+07) 304-8534 : Yes! I’m moving to Ferelden. Daphne Trevelyan, recent grad of the Ostwick Conservatory, 23 yo, single, nonsmoker, no pets… but I do like dogs. My fam has a LOT of dogs haha

 **(+11) 202-0166 :** Good to hear, why the move?

(+07) 304-8534 : Just tired of the scenery :) ever been?

 **(+11) 202-0166 :** No  
**(+11) 202-0166 :** Lived in Kirkwall for a bit

(+07) 304-8534 : :O Yuck I’m sorry. Kwall’s a toilet

 **(+11) 202-0166 :** Well, that’s why I left  
**(+11) 202-0166 :** are you still in Ostwick?

(+07) 304-8534 : yeah, but I’m leaving at the end of the week. I have a friend in Redcliffe who’ll put me up until I find a permanent place

 **(+11) 202-0166 :** Why South Reach?

(+07) 304-8534 : The university library hired me and it’s cheaper to live there than Redcliffe

 **(+11) 202-0166 :** Fair.  
**(+11) 202-0166 :** Pics?

(+07) 304-8534 : Of me?

 **(+11) 202-0166 :** Maker no. Do you want pics of the space

(+07) 304-8534 : Hahahaha so sorry! Yes I’d love some

 **(+11) 202-0166 :** _Sent a folder attachment_

(+07) 304-8534 : Ooh bigger than I thought! Haha

 **(+11) 202-0166 :** The space or the dog

(+07) 304-8534 : Both, I guess. Dog’s cute, what’s its name??

 **(+11) 202-0166 :** Jim

(+07) 304-8534 : A good name for a good boy. I’ll be in Ferelden next week, can I come for a tour?

 **(+11) 202-0166 :** sure, I don’t work next Tuesday

(+07) 304-8534 : Tuesday is perfect, 10:00am?

 **(+11) 202-0166 :** Sounds good

(+07) 304-8534 : Thank you so much!

* * *

_Gizmo search 7:45 PM how expensive to ship car across waking sea_  
_Gizmo search 7:48 PM 32 Paragon Slip sell price_  
_Gizmo search 7:49 PM used car dealership in Redcliffe_  
_**CTRL + SH + T**  how expensive to ship car across waking sea_  


_Gizmo search 8:30 PM Cullen South Reach_

Recipe: **Cullen** Skink, just in time for winter!

Webpage **: South Reach** Parks and Recreation

Recipe: mom’s famous **cullen** skink

Chattr: **Cullen** Andersen (@culland44)  
_Fishing enthusiast, amateur photographer, happily married_

Chattr: Bran Rutherford (@wishyouwerebeer)  
_soccer, powerlifting, craft beer, dogs. #FuckOrlais  
TAGGED IMAGE: @mia_harv @rosieruthers @ **cullen** ifhedevergetafuckingchattr_

Article: Is **South Reach** the fastest growing town in Ferelden?  
_Once a sleepy farm town, the **Reach** is home to a bustling university and seeing massive growth. A third high school to serve the city has been zoned on the east end _ … _residents face growing tensions with the university as more student housing projects drive up property taxes …_

Recipe: a modern twist on **cullen** skink…

 

* * *

 

_Gizmo search 7:46 PM Daphne Trevelyan_

Article: Powerhouse Engagement in Ostwick! You Won’t Believe This Ring…  
_Engagement alert! … **Trevelyan** finally betrothed to long time beau Thomas Rife of Rife, Jacoby, Jacoby & Halsted…_

Article: 2 Dead in Fatal Cliffside Crash  
_…two people, including a driver of one of the cars involved in the multi-vehicle crash have been pronounced dead at Ostwick Regional Hospital. The driver of the other vehicle remains unnamed. Also in the car was the youngest daughter of politician Maxwell **Trevelyan** , **Daphne** (22) who remains in critical…_

Video: Daph’s Senior Thesis Dance!  
(Open in VidTube) _Special thanks to my sisters Liza and Claire for bullying me through PT. This is for you xx_

Webpage: Distinguished Graduates of the Ostwick Conservatory  
Jump to – Department of Dance >> _Jacob B Terrence, BFA Dance—Performance and Choreography;_   ** _Daphne_** _A **Trevelyan** ¸ BFA Dance—Performance and Choreography; Paige H Trevor, BFA Dance—Dance Studies and Education; … _

Article: Despite Injury, OC Student Will Dance Again  
_... **Trevelyan,** after having a titanium rod inserted to correct a crush injury to her femur, is in good spirits following her final week of rehabilitation. The six months of physical therapy have pushed her graduation back, but **Daphne** remains optimistic. “Nothing short of death could keep her off the stage”… _

Chattr Profile : **Daphne** Tee (@daphtpunk)  
_Something something dance in the face of adversity. I like cats._


	2. The Ballerina-Socialite and the Lumberjack-Professor

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The roommates try to figure each other out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I can assure you, I haven't abandoned this. I'm just piss-terrible at time and project management.

She’s nervous.

She shouldn’t be, should she?

“Well of course I should be,” she mutters to herself, glancing into her rearview mirror. This is a complete stranger, one whom she’d texted a total of three times over the past week and a half, and she couldn’t find _anything_ on him on the internet. For all she knows, she’s walking into a kill room.

But the dog.

A potential serial killer wouldn’t show her a picture of his dog, would he? And pictures of the room and entire apartment? Maybe she should leave her phone in the car in case she never comes out.

But what if she gets a chance to call the police?

She hates that this guy holds all the power. She flips the visor down to check her appearance once more, swipes a hand through her hair to give it a stylish tousle, and checks the time. 9:57 am.

She types out a text message to her friend: _Going in. If you don’t hear from me in thirty it’s because this guy turned me into a lamp_

Daphne exits the car, throws her satchel over her shoulder, and shuts the door with her hip. She checks herself _again_ in the reflection of her car window. Black chinos, a chambray button down, powder-pink canvas shoes, the most ‘respectable young lady’ outfit she could put together; not ostentatious but not slobby, something that says, ‘you can trust me to rent out your room.’ She fluffs her hair, noting that the brown of her roots are starting to edge into her meticulously maintained blonde hair, and makes a note to find a salon in town once she’s settled in. Her mother’s voice clucks at her in the back of her head.

She looks around the complex. Plenty of parking, well-kept buildings, a dog run by the pool, and a fair number of trees. No furniture by the dumpster, no rusted cars… she even spots a pink tricycle on somebody’s patio. Her stomach settles.

From her back pocket, her phone buzzes. It’s her friend:

_whatever hes probably gay anyway_  
gay guys cant be serial killers  
and if he is a gay serial killer he obv wouldnt be interested in u   
anyway good luck dont get got!!!!  <3 

Daphne rolls her eyes, checks the time one last time (9:59) and marches toward building eight with as much confidence as she can muster. Eight-eighteen is on the first floor, which makes sense if he has a dog, and so at exactly ten o’clock, Daphne raises her hand to knock. Her hand freezes. Should she do a _fun_ knock? Is this guy a complete stick in the mud? Is three too austere or is it just right? Three is for pizza boys and four is for cops. Five sounds like an annoyed neighbor. Is there a doorbell?

_Knock knock knock_

She blew it, she didn’t even think, the knocks are too close together and they sound desperate and psychopathic and _oh no he’s hot._

The door swings open to reveal quite possibly the worst outcome she could have imagined, worse even than a serial killer: well-groomed, tall blond with glasses and a plaid flannel shirt. He looks her over as she tries her best smile and shoves her hand between them.

“Hi! You must be Cullen?” Her voice is too bright and too high and she begs herself to calm down. He shakes her hand, a firm grip with a solid pump, and steps aside to let her in. He doesn’t smile, but he also doesn’t frown.

“I am. I take it you’re Daphne?” he asks, and she curses the smooth baritone of his voice. Of course he’d look like a firefighter-professor-lumberjack and sound like caramel.

“I am,” she replies as smoothly as possible, tossing her hair over her shoulder and trying unsubtly to look for his dog. Serial killers can be handsome, but she hasn’t read of anyone who kills people in their spare time _and_ owns a dog. “It’s bigger than the pictures,” she says of the living room, eyeing the space. He nods, rubs the back of his neck.

“There’s not much to the place, so take a look around. The second bedroom is the door on the right, bathroom is on the left. Laundry is next to the pantry.” She assumes that the door at the end of the short hall is the master bedroom.

Daphne hums and investigates the space, noting the leather couch (easy to clean with an animal) and wicker basket full of blankets, the mounted television on the wall opposite a wall of curtains (which she parts to reveal a relatively spacious fenced off patio), and a complete lack of personal effects anywhere. There’s a reproduction of a Van Gogh hanging over the dining room table and a swath of seagrass and eucalyptus in a tall decorative bottle beside the entertainment center under the television, but there are no family photos, no certificates, no magazines.

Classic bachelor pad.

She moves through the kitchen and peeks into the cabinets. Cullen leans against the bar separating the kitchen and the dining room, tracing veins in the granite, trying not to watch her. She flushes slightly and tries not to bend over too much when she opens the oven door.

“So,” she starts, looking for the trash can. “What do you do?”

It’s a fair question, but he looks startled regardless. “I’m a detective,” he responds easily. A noise comes from down the hall and he frowns. Daphne hopes it’s the dog.

“Wow,” Daphne finds herself saying. “Is there much… detecting work to be done in South Reach?” She’d figured this to be a dozing city, not quite awakened to the chaos of Denerim or Redcliffe.

“You’d be surprised.” For the first time, his voice drifts out of neutrality and into something wry, and Daphne thinks there’s hope for him yet. She exits the kitchen and opens the laundry closet, wincing at the stacked washer and dryer. Stacked sets are usually small, but she opens the washer and finds a full barrel.

“Big,” she comments, shutting the door.

“Hm?”

“Oh, the um. Washer barrel is big. For some reason that’s important to me.”

“It’s the little things,” he agrees, and she smiles despite herself.

“Lots of light,” she notes. She thinks he might have nodded, but she doesn’t turn around to check, instead letting herself into the spare room. The full bed is tucked into the corner, a window just beside it, and a desk sitting diagonally in the corner under the window.

It’s definitely smaller than she’s used to, but if she can decorate the walls and put a curtain up, she can make it cozy rather than claustrophobic.

“You can change the sheets if you want,” Cullen says, hovering in the doorway. “My sister picked them out.”

“You have a sister?” she asks, turning down the fluffy eggshell-colored comforter to reveal seafoam sheets. It reminds her of Ostwick, so naturally she’ll be changing them soon. There’s an empty dresser on the blank wall near the desk, the bottom drawer storing spare towels and sheets. _This place is like a hotel._

“Two, actually. And a brother.”

“Big family,” she says faintly, investigating the empty closet. “We have that in common.”

“Oh?”

“A set of twin sisters, a brother, and another sister. All older.”

He hums his acknowledgment and steps aside to let her cross the hall into the bathroom.

“Ooh, double vanity!”

He chuckles for once. “Yes, it’s… convenient.”

“I don’t have a lot of… products,” she says, preemptively defending herself. “I know people think girls take over a bathroom, but I’ve been trying to keep things to a minimum.” He pulls back the shower curtain to show her a tiered wire organizer set in the corner. The top two tiers are full of bottles and a razor, but the bottom two are free. “Oh, that’s kind of perfect.”

She spies a linen closet behind the bathroom door.

“Have you had many offers?” she asks as casually as possible, returning to the open living room.

“Yes and no. Most have been students, and they’re known to flake on offers. One left as soon as I mentioned I’m a police officer.”

Daphne snorts. She remembers the dog. “Ehm… You mentioned a dog?”

Cullen smiles only slightly, and Daphne notices for the first time a scar that pulls at his upper lip. It’s roguish, she thinks, and she decides she hates him for it. He motions to the couch and she sits.

“I’ll get him. He doesn’t jump, but he does love new people,” he warns, and she smiles through a nod and watches him disappear into the hallway, rubbing her palms across her thighs and looking around the open space. She notices a DVD player and a game console hidden within the entertainment center, and a sizeable film and game collection.

“Well, it’s good to know he doesn’t stare at a wall in his free time,” she mutters under her breath. She wants to keep poking around, planning her space, but the door opens and she hears the jingle of a collar approaching. A smile blossoms across her face as a large golden retriever lopes around the corner, panting happily and approaching her without caution. She holds her palm up for him to sniff as he approaches, and Cullen leans against the wall to watch the exchange.

“You’re Jim, I presume?” she asks the dog, who in turn scoots forward to wedge his shoulders between her thighs. She laughs a little breathlessly and pats his shoulders as he sniffs, then licks her face.

“Jim,” Cullen admonishes, “down.”

Daphne laughs through the assault and scratches the dog behind the ears. “I don’t mind, really. I grew up with dogs.” He flops his head down onto her leg and looks up at her with warm brown eyes, boofing softly. She takes it as another request for head scratches and so obliges, looking up at Cullen to find him watching his dog with a strange expression on his face.

“Well, he seems to approve,” Cullen says, snapping out of whatever thought held him captive. “I suppose I can officially extend my offer.”

Daphne smiles brightly up at him. “Really?” she asks. He shrugs.

“Dogs are excellent judges of character.”

She snickers. “That’s a very Fereldan thing to say.”

“I’m a very Fereldan person.”

She concedes with a nod and reaches into her bag, still slung across her shoulder and sitting at her side. She pulls out an envelope and stands, much to Jim’s dismay, to pass it along.

“First month’s rent and half the deposit,” Daphne says at Cullen’s surprised face. “I may have read the property’s website last night.” She flushes slightly.

“You do your research,” he remarks, flipping through the bills in the envelope.

“Yeah, well… that’s why the library hired me, right?” she says, wincing at how utterly lame she sounds. Cullen might’ve smiled.

“When can you move in?” he asks. The dog comes to sit at his feet between them, looking up at his master and nudges a hand for attention. Cullen absently starts stroking his head.

Daphne looks guiltily through the door where she imagines her car might be, not fully willing to admit that her entire life is packed into her hatchback and she can technically move in today. “Well…” she starts, twisting her fingers, “Today?”

Cullen raises a brow.

* * *

CHATTRBOX

**liza_trev** : how’s the roommate?

daphtpunk : fine, I think  
daphtpunk : how’s the frostbacks?

**liza_trev** : cold, as usual.   
**liza_trev** : wym “you think?”

daphtpunk : idk he’s quiet? Not around much. Cop

**liza_trev** : oh maker don’t get arrested

daphtpunk : piss off that was one time. Protests don’t count anyway  
_daphtpunk sent a sticker!_

**liza_trev** : rude. What’s he like?

daphtpunk : iiidddkkkkk lizard. I told you he’s quiet. Stoic? He says hello when we cross but we work opposite schedules so I never see him. p sure he only watches the news :O  
daphtpunk : dont think he eats tho. Never seen him eat

**_liza_trev_ ** _is no longer available.  
**liza_trev** is available! _

daphtpunk : ????

**liza_trev** : hows yuor leg  
**liza_trev** : *yur  
**liza_trev** : maker…! YOUR

daphtpunk : don’t ski and text sis  
daphtpunk : its fine. Sore sometimes

**liza_trev** : you know I’m not out here to ski  
**liza_trev** : but dinners over so I need to go  
**liza_trev** : stretch your leg.

daphtpunk : go ski I bet P:   
daphtpunk : no promises

**liza_trev** : whatever. Bye ducky

daphtpunk : later days lizard

* * *

Cullen is unsure of what to think of his new flat mate.

He’d done his research and he knew who to expect on the other side of the door. Her face matches the social media profiles, with green eyes and tumbling blonde waves, high cheekbones and the slightest crook in her nose. She’s pretty in a delicate way with her long-limbed grace, and every time he’s come across her she’s looked more like a caricature of a person rather than someone of flesh and bone. She reminds him vaguely of one of his sister’s porcelain dolls, pale and posing.

She is not what he expected.

Then again, his frame of reference for ballerina-socialites is rather narrow, but so far, she has defied whatever expectations he’d had. He’s noticed that she changed the sheets on her bed from the pale green his sister picked out to a rich brown, and true to her word has yet to take over her side of the bathroom counter.

Now that he thinks about it, Cullen is almost positive he hasn’t heard her use the bathroom or shower _once._

She’s quiet. Unobtrusive. Her first twenty minutes in his—their—apartment had been something of a whirlwind; she’d spirited about the space, inspecting things he hadn’t thought she’d inspect, never tarrying in one space for too long, strangely reminiscent of a hummingbird, and when he extended his offer she’d sheepishly admitted that she was ready to move in that very day. A week later, she’s settled in and he’s seen her a total of three times in twice as many days.

All three times, she’s been in the kitchen, carefully stirring honey into a mug of tea and flipping through her phone, and all three times, she’s looked up with a polite smile, murmured good morning, and returned to her phone as he nodded his greeting and left for work. She doesn’t leave notes on the counter or hair in the drain. She doesn’t run the central air all day or freeze him out at night. She’s home when he returns from work and the door is closed, her bedroom light on, and—he’s ashamed to admit—the few times he’s angled his ear to the door, Cullen was surprised to hear _nothing_. No music or television, just the rhythmic clack of her ceiling fan and general electrical hum.

Each interaction with her is more confirmation that he’s sharing an apartment with a porcelain doll.

He frowns at his front door, wondering just what he’d wanted out of a roommate in the first place. With Daphne, it seemed he’d hit the jackpot; she’s clean, she’s quiet, and she doesn’t eat his food. He tells himself that he doesn’t care that she’s young and attractive, and he mostly believes it. His job saps more than enough of his energy, both emotional and physical, and even if he had the time or desire to talk to a woman, he’s aware of the power dynamic between them within the apartment and that’s not something he wants to abuse.

He wonders briefly, as he unlocks the front door, if that might be why Daphne’s been keeping to herself this entire week. Cullen frowns, mentally cataloguing his own actions to see if he’d been in any way unwelcoming, but he’s stopped short as the object of his thoughts tumbles from her room, hopping on one foot as she slings a high-heeled shoe onto the other.

“Oh!” she exclaims somewhat breathlessly, leaning into the wall to secure the other shoe onto her foot. “Hello. You’re home early.”

Cullen checks the clock on the microwave. He _is_ early, but her knowledge of that means that she’s been tracking his comings and goings. It seems they’re both hyperaware of each other.

“Slow day,” he explains, looking her over as she clacks her way into the kitchen. “Er… going somewhere?”

Daphne huffs and rolls her eyes. “I have a date.”

“You don’t seem particularly enthusiastic about it,” Cullen remarks, somewhat amused. She bends at the waist and flips her hair over, combing it into one hand and twisting it into a high bun. When she rights herself, her cheeks are flushed and he notices for the first time that she’s wearing dangling earrings that elongate her neck.

“I hate first dates,” she says plainly. “I avoid them whenever possible.”

“How do you suggest getting to know someone, then?” He goads, leaning on the island counter and watching as she rummages through the cupboards and pulls out a can of salted almonds.

“Okay, I don’t hate first dates. There’s a first for everything,” she admits, “but everyone makes such a huge deal out of it that they end up making a fool out of themselves. They dress better than they want to, they act like the person they wish they could be, and they essentially present this… idea of a person instead of who they really are.”

“So you wore that to work?” Cullen challenges, smirking into her glower. She chews a handful of almonds and nods.

“I changed my top, of course. No way he’ll notice the rest of the outfit.”

“And you’ll be just as charming tonight as you are now, Holden Caulfield?”

She snorts. “You’re hilarious.”

“I have moments.”

Daphne pauses, thinks a moment, and slides the earrings off, shoving them into her back pocket. “There’s a difference between being nice and acting nicely, I think. I’m almost positive he picked the fancy Orlesian place downtown just to impress me.” Her tone sours slightly.

“You don’t like Orlesian food?”

“Oh, I love it. I’m half-Orlesian myself, unfortunately. I just think it’s hilarious how everybody thinks country peasant food is the height of cuisine just because they have a frilly language.” She stuffs another handful of almonds into her mouth and talks through them, “I looked up the menu this afternoon, and a plate of ratatouille is about 15 sovereigns. That’s _literally_ a plate of roasted vegetables. I can guess right now that he’s going to order the coq au vin, the pronunciation of which he’ll be practicing in the car, order a bottle of red for the table, and wax rhapsodic about the _tannins_ and the notes of black currant on the back end.”

“Red? With chicken?” Daphne laughs and he finds himself smiling with her. “I do think that if this date goes poorly, it’ll be a fine case of confirmation bias,” he warns.

She swallows a final mouthful of almonds and stows the can in the cupboard, conceding his statement with a shrug and a noise in the back of her throat. “You’re probably right. Maybe he’ll impress me. He _is_ a reference assistant… he might not be so boring and predictable.” She moves around him and collects her bag from the other side of the kitchen island.

“So he’s from work?”

“Mm. Cornered me in the music history stacks. I may or may not have been reading dust jackets instead of shelving books.”

“Is he picking you up?”

Daphne barks a laugh. “No, Mum. I’m meeting him there. I know better than to get in the car of a near stranger.”

Cullen lifts a brow and replies drily, “but you’ll rent a room from one.”

She flushes prettily, fishing her keys out of her bag. “Right,” she says brightly. “I’ve got a friend calling me in an hour if I need a rescue, but—”

“That _actually_ happens?”

“Of course it does,” she says, shushing him with a finger pointed in his direction, “ _but_ if he’s not insane or too pretentious to handle, I should be home around nine. If not, call me at nine-thirty, and at ten… I dunno. You’re a cop, look for my body in an alley, I guess.”

Cullen snorts but nods, walking her to the door and throwing good wishes at her back as he locks up behind her. He’s struck for a moment at the ease with which she just spoke to him, wondering where her personality was hiding in the week since she’d moved in. The eye rolling and huffy sarcasm is something more along the lines of what he’d expected.

Maybe she just needed time to settle in, or maybe he’d caught her off guard and she decided to roll along with it. Whatever the case, Cullen hopes Daphne’s amiable side is here to stay.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hang out with me on Tumblr @lonely-spaghetti (hyphen included). I'm like Tinker Bell: I need validation to live.


	3. Smarter Than She Looks

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bad days are bad, but they get better.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Surprise, bitch.
> 
> (mild content warning for mentions of death and depression.)

He has a headache.

Perhaps Jim can tell, because he’s plastered to Cullen’s leg and won’t stop looking over his shoulder at him with that doggy, panting smile. Cullen huffs a laugh and pats his head. “I promise I’m fine,” he assures him. Jim snaps his mouth shut to wet his tongue and shifts to lie next to his chair.

A television in the corner quietly displays a midmorning talk show, hosted by a pair of retired models stirring brunch drinks and crossing and uncrossing their shiny, tanned legs. They have yet to introduce a guest, but they tease the arrival of some actor promoting a new film and a performance from a band enjoying record-breaking chart toppers. They’ll never get to the interviews, Cullen thinks, if they keep passively jabbing at each other.

The office phone rings and Cullen winces. Jim reminds him of his presence by nudging his toe with his nose. He hadn’t slept well last night, and the smell of a doctor’s office—antiseptic, with the cloying floral scent of potpourri to mask it—does little to ease the fraying knots in his head. He supposes he should have eaten breakfast as well, but he couldn’t bring himself to choke down anything beyond one of Daphne’s teas this morning. _Calming chamomile_ , the box promised. It did nothing to settle his nausea. Impulsively, he texts her.

**I drank some of your tea and it did not do what it said it would.**

He stares at the screen for a moment and is about to lock his phone and toss it in his pocket when a series of replies tumbles in:

_You drank my tea w/o asking????_  
Kidding, it’s like 3 bucks a box  
…what’d you drink and what’s your problem

**I was nauseated this morning so I drank some chamomile.**

_Ohhh you need peppermint. I have some, it’s behind the breakfast blend  
why nauseated? _

**Happens.**

_Fair. Chamomile’s for sleeping btw! Peppermint for tum, green for headaches:)_

**You have too much tea.**

_No such thing ;) ;)_

A door opens and a nurse pokes his head out. “Cullen?”

He rises and loops Jim’s leash around his hand, silencing and stowing his phone in his coat pocket. Jim stretches and follows as the nurse leads them through the cluster of offices to an unmarked door reserved for visiting doctors. The nurse knocks twice and pokes his head in before opening it fully for Cullen to step through.

“Cassandra,” he greets. “Good to see you.” She’s wearing a lilac button-up that compliments the olive undertones in her skin and accentuates the grey in her eyes. Cullen has always been struck by Cassandra’s face; she’s beautiful in the same way a thunderstorm is, arresting and dangerous, angular and stark, her cropped inky-black hair allowing for a frank assessment by anyone who happens to look upon her. Her mouth, often stern and unsmiling, is wide and full enough to soften the angles of her face and her voice further tempers her intimidating presence. A Nevarran accent is exotic enough in the backwater of South Reach, but her tendency toward elongated vowels and softer sibilant notes lends her voice an almost musical quality.

She smiles faintly and gestures for him to sit down as the door closes behind him with a soft _snck_. There’s a tablet propped up in front of her with a keyboard attachment. “You brought Jim,” she comments, leaning around the desk to find the dog plopped over Cullen’s shoes. His ears twitch at his name, but he doesn’t move.

“You asked me to,” Cullen says.

“You’re not taking him to work?”

“No. He’d have to train as a K-9 unit and he’s too old.”

“You don’t have to take him on cases. He can go to the office with you,” she says, her voice carefully passive. She clacks at her tablet and Cullen sighs.

“I don’t have issues in my everyday.” Cassandra looks up from her screen.

“So, it’s still only nightmares?”

“Yes.”

“No dissociating, no lack of focus…”

“No.”

“No hypervigilance or anxiety?”

“Well, my job requires some degree of vigilance—” she glowers, “—no, and no anxiety.”

Cassandra makes a note. “How’s your family?”

“Fine, I suppose.”

“You suppose?”

Cullen sighs. Mia calls about twice a week to invite him over for dinner and conveniently, he’s almost always working and able to decline. Bran still won’t talk to him unprompted, and Rose texts him out of the blue to chat, but the conversations never last long. When Cassandra found him in Kirkwall seeking discharge from the Order, she offered to put him anywhere in Ferelden he wanted—he nearly chose Denerim, for there’d be no shortage of cases in the capital city, but he went with South Reach to be near his family. He’d missed ten years and the death of both his parents; he figured he needed to make up for lost time, especially now that Mia’s got her own family, but he can’t bring himself to fully bridge the gap. It’s easier to be distant.

“You’re isolating yourself.”

“I am not,” Cullen says, slightly defensive. Cassandra arches a brow and he leans back into the leather office chair. “I got a roommate, at least.”

The rhythmic clacking of her keyboard pauses for just a beat before picking up again. “Tell me about him.”

“Her, actually,” he corrects automatically, and the arched brow returns.

“Oh?”

“She moved here from Ostwick. She’s…”

_Last Week_

_He’d fallen asleep on the couch waiting for her to get back from her date._

_It’s not that he was worried about her—consciously, anyway—but she’d only been in South Reach for two weeks and already she was out with a near stranger (never mind the irony of living with one). The fact that she felt the need for an escape plan was worrisome, so he simply found a movie on cable and planned to watch it until she returned. He’d allowed Jim onto the sofa and the pressure and warmth of a dog on his legs combined with a slow-moving period drama had lulled him into a light slumber. The lights were off save for the glow of the television and the light over the stove. He didn’t know how long he was out until the jangling of keys outside roused him, followed by the quiet opening of the front door._

_Jim had stirred but he stubbornly clung to the cozy haze that accompanies a good couch nap, keeping his arm thrown over his head but coming around to the sound of clicking heels and quiet dialogue still droning forth from the TV. He blinked his eyes open but didn’t sit, choosing for some reason to listen as Daphne kicked her heels off and open the fridge. Jim clambered down from the couch and approached and Cullen heard for the first time the sounds of… sniffling?_

_“Hey, bud.” There was a slight wobble in Daphne’s voice and Cullen was immediately infuriated and deeply ashamed for being present for what Daphne could only have assumed was a quiet breakdown. She was home early enough—did her date do something? Would she confide in him if he made his presence known? Cullen pushed himself up enough to look over the edge of the couch into the kitchen, finding Daphne crouched with her hands massaging Jim’s ears in the way that would have him groaning in about thirty seconds. “Maybe I should let_ you _take me on a date next time, yeah?” she said, giggling slightly when he licked her chin. “I know_ you _won’t be a complete and utter dick.”_

_She moved to stand and Cullen retreated, feeling like he’d be in more trouble if he got caught watching a private moment between his distraught roommate and his dog than if she’d simply found him sleeping on the couch._

_The fridge door closed and she sighed, presumably leaning against the counter. Cullen chanced a peak over the couch again; her heels were on the kitchen island and she was in fact leaning against it, hair flowing freely with fingers buried within golden strands and digging into her scalp. She wasn’t crying anymore, but her brows were furrowed and her eyes were closed, head leaned back in a stretch. “I shouldn’t have come here,” she murmured into the space above her. Cullen sank back into the couch and regretted his distance._

\---

“She’s nice. Clean, friendly. Keeps to herself, gets on with Jim just fine.” She’s mysterious and homesick and Cullen is an ass, but Cassandra doesn’t need to know all of this.

“Her name?” Cassandra asks. Cullen fails to see how that’s relevant, but he answers.

“Daphne.”

“What does Daphne do?”

“Ah.” He knows where she works—but what _exactly_ does she do? “She works on campus. At the library.”

“A student?”

“No.”

They lapse into silence for a moment before Cassandra asks, “How’s work?”

Cullen wants to laugh. “Quiet.”

She can sense the inch of restlessness in his tone. “I thought you wanted quiet.”

“I did. Or, I thought I did. I’m just used to Kirkwall, I suppose.”

“What’s your caseload like?”

“Petty larceny, minors in possession, domestic disturbances.”

“Sounds like beat work.”

Cullen huffs. “It is, until something even remotely big happens.” Cassandra regards him with an unreadable look in his eye and he wants to squirm.

“How’s the withdrawal?”

“I get headaches and nausea the farther I go without doses.”

“Shaking?”

“Not yet.”

“Distracted?”

“Comes with the headaches.”

“Hmm.” A moment of typing. “Your last dose?”

“A week ago. Tomorrow’s my next.”

“Would you like to start smaller doses or go longer in between them?”

“Can’t I do both?”

Cassandra frowns. “It’s not recommended, though I’m not there to police your usage.”

“I’ll go down first and then space them out.”

“Sounds good.”

“When do you think I’ll be able to quit?” he asks, his voice soft. Cassandra studies him for a moment.

“That’s up to you, Cullen. You control the pace of your tapering; I’m just here to hold you accountable.” He nods and she speaks again, “Though I recommend that when it happens, you make use of an outpatient facility.”

“How long?”

“That depends on you. Usually a weekend.”

“Remind me of the relapse rate.”

“Cullen—”

“Remind me.”

“Sixty-five percent.”

He won’t. He can’t.

“Thank you. Is that all?”

Cassandra sighs and types for a few seconds more before disconnecting the keyboard and locking her tablet. She rises and Cullen follows, Jim at his feet.

“I’ll let you know when I come back south,” Cassandra says as she opens the door. “If anything changes or you need something, you have my number and email.” Cullen nods and is about to step through the door when she says, “take care of yourself, Cullen.”

He tries a smile but it feels strange on his face, nodding instead before making his way to reception. Cassandra’s voice echoes in his head: _you’re isolating yourself._

If he has, it hasn’t been intentional. It’s easier to throw himself into his work—what little work there is to do here in South Reach, at least—than it is to reconnect with his family. Bran hasn’t yet forgiven him for missing their father’s funeral, but Mia and Rose make an effort to invite him into their lives, and he always manages an excuse so he won’t have to look them in the eyes; they know him better than anyone, and they’d be able to see through his walls in a second.

He slides his insurance card across the counter and his cell phone grows heavy in his pocket. He should call Mia. He should tell her that he _can_ come to family dinner, that he’s sorry for avoiding them after moving to South Reach specifically to be near them, that he appreciates the tags on the profile he only checks twice a month. He collects his insurance card with a half-hearted attempt at a smile and pockets his wallet, pulling his phone out once he’s out of the office with the intention to call Mia.

2 New iMessages: Daphne

_Could you do me a huuuuuge favor and bring me some lunch?  
I’ll pay you back!! I forgot to pack one and the options on campus are… gross. _

Cullen fights a smile and opens a different message thread.

TO: Mia Collins

**I can come to dinner this week. Want me to bring anything?**

He slides into his car with Jim stretched across the back seat and keeps his phone in his pocket as he drives toward campus, realizing that he never messaged Daphne back asking what she wants or how to even find her. He also notices that this is the most they’ve talked outside of the apartment and wonders if she might be lonely, still trying to adjust to a new town and a new job. He knows nearly nothing about her beyond what he learned in his original research of her; he didn’t go as far as abusing his power at the station to run a complete background check, but beyond what’s available on the Internet, he knows little about his roommate.

Which is why he’s found himself halfway up the library steps, dog in tow, to see if he might take her to lunch, instead of simply dropping something off. Students are staring; first at Jim, in his red vest, and then at Cullen, perhaps to discern Jim’s purpose—what could a young, healthy-looking man possibly need a service dog for? He’s gotten used to the curious looks, thankful at least that nobody has had the gall to outright ask. To his credit, Jim trots along happily, unaware of the curious glances bouncing off him and along to his human.

The ground floor of the library is about what Cullen expected it to be, with a circulation desk off to the left and a large staircase and set of elevators to the right, banks of computers set up in the gulf between. There’s a coffee kiosk in the back next to a wall of televisions, most of which are turned to broadcast news and sports stations, save for one showing a cartoon channel. The semester is in full swing, and if Cullen is correctly judging the timing, the first round of exams and papers will be due soon; as such, the air is abuzz with clacking keyboards and murmuring voices, occasionally punctuated by a laugh or dramatic groan.

He has little idea of what Daphne actually _does_ in this library, so he heads for the circulation desk. There’s a short line in front of a student worker at a computer and another in front of a man closer to Cullen’s age checking out books, so he stands at the corner of the L-shaped desk and waits for either line to dissipate—or for Daphne to show up. Jim sits at his feet and examines the library quietly, ever the professional. Cullen gives his ears a light scratch.

“Can I help you?”

Cullen replaces the pamphlet full of research techniques upon the counter and smiles politely. “I’m looking for Daphne,” he says to the man previously checking out books. The man frowns, pushing his tortoiseshell glasses up his nose, bringing hawkish brown eyes into greater focus.

“Why?”

Cullen blinks. “Well, I—”

“I can’t just go around giving employee whereabouts to complete strangers, you know. What business do you have with Miss Trevelyan?”

Cullen holds his breath momentarily before exhaling, the grip on Jim’s leash tightening infinitesimally. Something about the way the man’s voice _sounds_ makes Cullen want to punch him in the throat, but he can’t quite place it. Before he can explain that he _lives with_ Daphne and isn’t a ‘complete stranger,’ a familiar voice calls out behind him.

“Cullen?” He turns to find a slightly incredulous Daphne standing behind a rolling media cart. Jim sights her and his front paws tap excitedly, but he daren’t move from his post or bark whilst wearing his red service vest.

“Hey,” he says somewhat sheepishly. “I, ah. Thought we could get lunch.”

“I should have texted,” Cullen says. “I don’t even know if you have time—”

“Daphne, he’s been here for ten minutes—” the man interrupts, stealing Daphne’s attention momentarily. She arches a well-manicured brow.

“Two minutes—” Cullen interjects.

“Insisting I find you, I had no idea _who_ he is—” Pretentious. Cullen decides the best word to describe Daphne’s coworker is ‘pretentious.’

“Neil, he’s my _roommate_ ,” Daphne says flatly, “and frankly, none of your concern.” She fixes her face with a smile. “Lunch sounds good! Let me get my purse.” She brushes past him with a squeeze of his bicep, disappearing into the offices behind the circulation, and Cullen is left with the man newly identified as Neil, who almost seems to have smoke pouring off him. Cullen wonders if he might be the man Daphne went to dinner with; he’s attractive enough, if Cullen has any taste, but everything about him, from the sweater-tie combination to the thick glasses and carefully-tousled hair indicates that he’s trying to pull off an air of intellectualism far beyond his actual intelligence.

Pretentious.

Daphne returns with her bag just as Cullen decides that he’s the last person who should judge who his roommate seems fit to date, even if Neil _is_ the one who took her to that pompous Orlesian place and somehow made her cry last week.

He finds his free arm being commandeered by Daphne’s hand, a small pressure in the bend of his elbow ushering him toward the wall of double doors. Over his shoulder, he hears Neil call out, but he can’t be bothered to listen to what he says. Daphne pulls a face as soon as she’s out of Neil’s field of vision.

“Ass,” she mutters, dropping Cullen’s arm once they’ve exited the library. “So. What’s for lunch?”

At that question, Cullen blanks. He had evidently not thought that far, running through a mental list of everything within walking distance of the city square, from which they’re only three blocks away. “There’s a café on the square that I know a lot of people from work like,” he suggests, settling on the place with the most menu variety. Daphne shrugs her agreement and smiles, falling into step as Cullen leads the way. He feels the need to fill the silence, but she beats him to it.

“I’m sorry about Neil,” she says blandly. “He’s been insufferable since last week.”

Cullen hums, his suspicions confirmed. “Ah, was he the date?”

She huffs as they come upon a crosswalk, and Cullen looks over to find a scowl on her face. “Yeah.” Her answer is short and curt and Cullen decides he won’t push the subject, but he can’t help but remember the quiet moment he’d intruded upon between her and his dog. Jim smacks his lips and pants away happily between them. “He told me I was ‘smarter than I looked.’”

The light flashes and they cross the street. Cullen finds himself repeating the phrase: “Smarter than you look?”

She laughs. “Yeah, right?” she says, correctly interpreting the incredulity in his voice. “What a dick.”

“You don’t look…” she turns her face to him and arches a brow as he scans her face, noting her light makeup, the impossible brightness in her eyes, blonde waves framing a soft jaw. Nothing about her looks unintelligent; in fact, the slightest catlike tilt in her eye shape implies a certain shrewdness about her. He looks away when he’s suddenly drawn to the bow of her lips, a stubborn heat creeping up his neck. “Did he mean because you’re blonde? Because I find that personally insulting.”

She glances up at his hair and snorts. “I can only imagine. I’m not even naturally blonde, you know,” she confesses, crossing her arms casually as they stop at another light. A cyclist chances a break in the traffic pattern and zooms past her shoulder, drawing her closer to him with a huff. Her perfume washes over him and he can’t help but note hints of… lavender? Cullen takes a hard look at her hair: a medium blonde, with lighter strands throughout; natural-looking enough, but upon closer inspection he can see roots just a shade darker, no doubt disguised with clever hair product.

“I couldn’t tell,” Cullen admits, suddenly pondering on what she might look like with a different hair color. He wonders with eyes as green as hers and her Marcher roots that she might have been a redhead. They cross the street again and he pulls ahead to open the door to the café that rests on the street corner. She’s swiping through something on her phone.

“Hiiii,” the hostess sings, a syrupy smile on her face. Cullen nods his greeting and Daphne briefly tucks her phone into her purse. “Table for two?” she asks, pulling menus and consulting a chart. They’re led through the café to the back wall and seated beneath some local art, Jim tucked unobtrusively under the table, resting on Cullen’s feet. The hostess leaves with promises of a server joining them shortly, and Daphne pulls out her phone to resume swiping.

“Aha,” she says, handing over the phone. Cullen’s faced with a photo of four girls ranging from young teenager to young adult, two identical twins with white-blonde hair and bright blue eyes in the center, another, slightly older blonde in a top-knot standing behind them, and the youngest draped across the twins’ laps with a hand on her hip and the other supporting her head, with long, loose dark brown waves and bright green eyes.

“I’m assuming you’re the brunette?” he asks, finding himself charmed by the picture of these sisters. He hands the phone back and she deposits it in her purse.

“I am,” she confirms, smiling ruefully. “I wanted to look like I was related, never mind that I’m the spitting image of my father.” She sighs. “They got the Orlesian half, I got the Marcher half.”

Cullen thinks he’d almost prefer the Marcher half, but is prudent enough not to mention it. A server approaches the table and saves him from trying to navigate the minefield of ‘you’re pretty now and you’d be pretty with brown hair’ without being offensive or inappropriate.

“Hey,” the server announces, doing her best to keep the boredom out of her voice. “My name is Margot and I’ll be taking care of you today.” She pulls out a pad of paper and flicks her hair out of her face. “Can I get you started with anything to drink?”

Daphne opens the menu and scans it quickly. “What’s your selection of tea like?”

Margot flips to the back of her order pad and reads off a list: “green jasmine, white pomegranate, earl grey, and vanilla… roo-ee… roy-bo…”

Cullen watches Daphne purse her lips. “Earl grey, please. And some honey, if you have it.”

“It’s hot,” she warns, and Daphne shrugs, uncaring of the fact that someone can break a sweat just by _looking_ outside. Margot slides her eyes to Cullen. “Ah. Water, please.”

“Lemon?”

“No, thank you.”

Margot flips the pad shut and shoves it into her apron as she departs, Daphne frowning faintly at her retreating back.

“I want breakfast food,” she says, turning her face toward the menu. “Do they serve breakfast all day?”

Cullen fights the smile off his face in time for her to look at him with questioning eyes. “They do,” he answers, charmed by the fact that she’d stubbornly get hot tea in the hottest part of the year and eat pancakes for lunch.

* * *

_Next Thursday. Ben has a game this week, unless you want to come to that. Otherwise you don’t need to bring anything_

**Football, right?**

_Whatever semblance of football five-year-olds play, yes. 6:00 @ riverside park.  
I hope you can make it. We miss you_

**I know. I’m sorry, Mia**

* * *

_“Elle.” Her ribs hurt. “Ella, wake up—” She’s sprawled on the floor in the back seat of Rachelle’s car. Why?_

_She remembers Rachelle needing an address, the book in the back seat, and so she had crawled back to find it. She remembers a sudden deceleration making her stomach flip, and a curse cut off by a stomach-curling crunch._

_There’s blood in her mouth and her neck is stiff, but she can move all her fingers and toes, so she tries to sit. Rachelle doesn’t speak, slumped over the driver’s seat. Panic flares in her gut. She can’t find either of their phones._

_Rain pounds against the cracked glass of the window and she wonders if it might give way to the storm, if it’s possible to drown in the back seat of this car with bruised ribs and blood in her mouth. She needs to get out—pries the lock open with bloody fingers (from where?) and the door is stuck—she flips and kicks it open and falls onto hissing, rain-soaked pavement—_

_The rain is so cold, she thinks, looking for the other car. There was another car, wasn’t there? Or did Rachelle not see the hairpin turn in the mountain pass and plow straight through the barrier into the rock face?_

_Try the door—stuck—bang the glass—all that does is send sharp, thin pain up her elbow into her shoulder—her eyes are open why are her eyes open Ella please—_

_Ella, her best friend, with wild curls and the husband who adores her, who danced her first pas de deux with her, going as far as to wear a plastic mustache that reduced the both of them to giggles, with eyes like a storm and a temper like wildfire—her first kiss, once—_

_“Ella please,” she hears herself sob, banging weak fists on the window, drowning in the storm, heedless of the headlights coming round the corner. They have a workshop to get to. A summer intensive. They’d planned all year, rented a flat in the city—_

_Her best friend is dead. She’s in the middle of the road in the middle of this storm wailing loud enough to rival the thunder when it happens: the other car doesn’t see until it’s far too late, and maybe that’s what happened to Rachelle, but suddenly Daphne is thrown, airborne for half a second that stretches into eternity before slamming onto the roof of the car and rolling onto the pavement, leg snapped like a dry branch underfoot, thunder pounding between her ears and she stares into the unyielding sky before the shock of it all claims her, her last thought being “perhaps I’ll drown in this rain—”_

Her alarm sounds for the third time in thirty minutes and she snoozes it again, blinking into a quiet ceiling and willing the thunder out of her ears.

Her eyes slide to the window on the far wall. The sliver of light that breaks through her curtains is dim—oppressive grey, the threat of rain that will likely pass before breaking into a storm, but enough to set her anxiety roiling in her stomach. She blesses whichever deity is out there for giving her the day off, because bad nights lead to bad mornings lead to bad days—

To weeks and months and what’s even the point, if all of it is _bad._

Her blanket is too hot and so she kicks it off, but the air is too cold and her legs prickle in the open air of her room, but she can’t be bothered to find something thinner or grope along her floor for pants, and so she stares into the greyness of her ceiling and hits snooze again when another ten minutes has passed.

Twenty.

She checks the display—no texts, a notification from Chattr, and an email from OC’s alumni association. It’s ten-fifty in the morning. Cullen’s long gone for the day and Jim is either pouting by the front door or pouting in Cullen’s room, which she still hasn’t been nosy enough to poke her nose into, because Cullen’s a detective and he’d be able to tell instantly if she’d been in his room despite a lack of explicit instruction not to do so. It’s roommate code, she thinks, _hopes_ that he hasn’t been in her room, because even though she can’t bring herself to clean she’s still embarrassed of the week or so’s worth of dirty laundry thrown around the room, along with a few dishes stacked on the dresser that she hopes he hasn’t noticed missing.

She’s struck with some guilt, because Cullen’s been awfully nice to her and she’s been… well. Awful. She doesn’t remember the last time she actually spoke to him beyond vague greetings in the week since he’d taken her to breakfast-lunch, because the last week has been a complete drag and she’s barely been able to pull herself out of bed and make it to work, because it’s easy enough to be depressed when you have no responsibilities, but now she’s got a job and bills and she’d get fired for wallowing in her bed, and she makes up for it by wallowing every other opportunity she gets.

And Cullen’s been absolutely lovely to her—insisted he buy her lunch to make up for her awful date with Neil, and she wondered at the time with a flush if that meant that _lunch_ had been a date, and she had been happy to pretend that it was, enjoyed fantasizing that when he walked her back to campus he’d kiss her cheek and tell her he’d see her at home, and what does she want for dinner?

She feels like a fraud, especially after he told her he’d been a templar, that he’d been one in Kirkwall when all hell broke loose three years ago when she was twenty and unconcerned with such happenings in another city because she didn’t notice that the Chantry exploding crippled their economy and made her father’s stocks suffer as a result, because all she had to do was dance and get a ring on her finger while Cullen was trying his best not to get himself killed in a civilian coup. Suddenly Jim makes a lot more sense, moving from the chaos of Kirkwall to the sleepy backwater college town that is South Reach makes sense, the careful distance in his eyes and the three cups of coffee a day all make sense and she feels like a fraud for wallowing in her bed all morning instead of forcing herself out of bed and getting on with her life, garbage person that she is.

A voice that sounds like Rachelle’s rebukes her before the thought can even complete itself, reminding her that all pain is valid and negativity should not be a motivator, but that’s hard advice to remember when Daphne feels as worthless as she does and the titanium rod holding her femur together is scorching her muscles.

She lists out of bed and double-checks that Cullen is gone with a peak down the hall before shuffling into the bathroom in a tank top and her underwear. She needs a shower, her hair thick with day-four grease, and she avoids looking at her roots because she can’t bring herself to find a salon, because it’d be another month or so as blonde Daphne, the girl who can’t hold it together, the girl whose fiancé hated her, the girl whose mother disowned her, and despite her anger—at them as much as herself—she’s kept the hair because she thought maybe she could fix it, even a thousand miles away.

Obviously, she hasn’t, and she doubt she ever will. Maybe with her mother, maybe even with Regina, but not with Thomas. She doesn’t even want to try with Thomas.

The blonde has brought a new layer of resentment. She scowls as she pulls her hair back and turns on the faucet, leaning forward to splash her face with water. An intrusive thought invades her head. It’s the voice of her co-worker and date from last week: _you’re smarter than you look._ Of course he’d meant it as a compliment, as obtuse, pretentious ass-bags tend to do. Of course he hadn’t thought about the underlying subtext of that backhanded compliment— _you’re harder to bag than I originally anticipated—_ but it was there, and Daphne couldn’t look past it. She lathers face wash onto her skin, silently fuming. He’d asked her what she studied. She answered with “oh, just dance.”

She doesn’t know why she said it that way, shrinking in the shadow of his fancy history degree, his master’s thesis on how Dwarven trading systems persevered during the Blights. _Just dance._ As if she didn’t spend an entire semester in anatomy and physiology classes, or another in advanced music theory. As if she couldn’t run a full-scale stage production herself or read and annotate sheet music for an entire orchestra. As if there wasn’t a full score to _The Firebird_ underneath her passenger seat, scribbled and highlighted to oblivion, complete with stage directions and costume designs drawn in the margins.

As if she weren’t proud. She’d always been proud. Nothing fit her like a pair of pointe shoes—nowhere felt more like home to her than a studio. What changed? What could change to make her feel that steady again? She gives herself a hard stare in the mirror, eyes red, face dripping from the sink.

If she were to dye her hair now, would it look like it was done in reaction to Neil’s comment? To look smarter, like she belongs in a library? Would it even matter?

_You’re smarter than you look._

She had an entire speech by the end of that night, but nothing came out at the time. She would have torn Neil apart if she could only do more than blink and try not to breathe smoke out of her nose.

Fuck it.

Daphne charges into her room and picks a pair of boyfriend jeans off the floor, yanks her tank top off and throws on a pink bralette (the only clean bra she has left at this point) and a slouchy white blouse, shoving her feet into sandals and snatching her purse on the way out, only barely remembering to stop and refill Jim’s water bowl, who is either with Cullen or snoozing in his room.

She finds the salon easily. It’s next to the café Cullen had taken her to and she’s passed it half a dozen times. She’s normally picky with her hair, scouring the internet for reviews and testimonials, but right now she’s on a high and if she doesn’t do it now, she doesn’t know when she’ll have the opportunity, so she marches into the salon and crosses her arms on top of the high receptionist’s counter, waiting to be acknowledged.

“Can I help you?” he finally says, giving her a once-over when he’s done clacking away at his computer.

“I need a full head single-process,” she says, and her voice is hoarse because these are the first words she’s spoken all day. The receptionist arches a perfectly manicured brow, eyes the length of her ponytail, and she adds: “maybe a cut too.”

“Hair that long is going to take at least three hours,” he says somewhat snidely. “I’ll see when someone is available.”

“The sign says you accept walk-ins,” Daphne cuts in, a hint of desperation in her voice. She needs to get this done. Needs to. Last resort is a box dye.

“Yeah, for like… bang trims. Not makeovers.”

“Liam, retract the claws,” comes a voice from the back. A thin elven woman with impossibly pink hair appears from the back, wiping her hands on a towel. “I’ll do it. I was doing the books, but I’m bored, and you have a lot of hair.”

“I do,” Daphne says, not bothering to fight the smile breaking out across her face. “Thank you.”

The stylist might have caught on to her state, because her stormy eyes soften and she gestures to a chair. “What am I doing to you?” she asks, pulling the elastic out of Daphne’s hair and combing out the snarls while Daphne searches for the picture she’d shown Cullen. She takes the phone when Daphne offers it and appraises it, eyes swiveling from the picture to her head. “Easy,” she pronounces, handing the phone back and reaching for a cape. “Here’s what we’re gonna do: I’m gonna pull some highlights out—auburn, chestnut—for dimension, and then do your whole head in this delicious color I call black coffee. It’s not black, I promise, you can close your mouth—it’s just this deep, deep rich brown that I _know_ is gonna fly like tits with your complexion.” She takes a comb and parts different sections of Daphne’s hair, weighing out sections and considering her roots. “Cool?”

“Cool,” Daphne echoes, allowing the cape to snap around her throat. The stylist scrubs along her undercut before piling pink curls onto one side of her head.

“Sick. I’m Ashara. Forgot to mention that. I’m going to go mix your colors, you hang tight.”

There’s a certain giddiness that accompanies sitting in a salon chair—the promise of change, or the fact that she’s about to get three hours of hair-based personal attention, maybe, but either way, Daphne’s fingers twist around themselves in her lap beneath the cape, and behind her, receptionist Liam clacks loudly and bitterly away at his computer.

Ashara returns with three bowls and a box of foils in her hands and sets to work immediately, and Daphne is pleasantly surprised at how easy she is to talk to. She learns that she’s from Gwaren originally, descended from Dalish elves, but nobody lives in clans anymore and she can’t stand the elves who insist on telling everyone whose blood they carry, insisting that her intricate tattoos have nothing to do with ancient vallaslin.

“I _do_ have a halla tattoo, though,” she confesses at one point, halfway through Daphne’s hair. “They’re pretty.”

Daphne shows her a picture of the red feather tattoo on her thigh, designed to hide the scar from the surgery that placed the rod in her leg. They share tattoo dreams and clumsy stories and then Daphne is handing over her debit card so Ashara can get her lunch from next door while the color processes, and two hours and a club sandwich later, the elf is pulling foils from her head and rinsing her hair, lathering conditioner that smells like eucalyptus into the strands and scratching her scalp in a way that makes Daphne clamp down on a pleased hum.

“Still want a cut? You could use some shaping. Maybe a little thinning,” Ashara says, squeezing water out of Daphne’s hair. She nods as best she can with her head still leaned back in the sink and she’s guided back to the chair, but Ashara throws a spare cape over the mirror so Daphne’s forced to listen to Liam’s clacking and Ashara’s humming and occasional comments, unable to watch obsessively.

“How do you want this bad bitch styled, hm?” she asks, brushing dark, wet locks off the cape onto the floor.

“Uh…”

“Kay, never mind, I got it.” The music and Ashara’s humming is cut off by the whir of a hair dryer, and more product is layered into her hair as Daphne’s anticipation builds, catching dark strands as they fall into her line of sight.

“Ooh girl. Tell me you’re single and at least a little gay,” Ashara says, finally stowing her brush and dryer. Daphne flushes and behind them, Liam snorts at his desk.

“Depends on the weather,” Daphne jokes, spinning herself to face the covered mirror. Ashara waggles her eyebrows and rips the cape off the mirror with a flourish and a smirk.

Daphne’s voice is stuck in her throat and tears spring in her eyes. She cards her hand through her hair, shiny and dark and styled in fat, loose curls, dead ends cut away and with less weight than it’s had in months.

“Uh oh. Good tears, bad tears?”

Daphne swallows. “It’s the first time I feel like I’ve looked like _myself_ in ten years,” Daphne says, blinking rapidly. “I love it.”

Ashara sighs. “Oh, thank the Maker.”

She’s hoisted from her chair and ushered to the receptionist desk where she pays—at a discount and with a phone number written on the back of the receipt—and leaves, feeling lighter than she has in months. She catches herself in windows and mirrors all the way home, marveling in how her complexion suddenly looks right, her eyes look greener—she looks like _Daphne._ She feels real.

She snaps a selfie in the parking lot outside the apartment and sends it to her sisters and her dad. Inside, Jim boofs suspiciously before recognizing her scent, and after a few minutes of hair sniffing and attempts to eat her fruity-smelling waves, he supervises her suddenly inspired effort to wash every piece of clothing she owns and clean every inch of apartment she can reach.

Cullen catches her hauling a load of laundry into her room when he comes home from work, perhaps suspicious of a brunette in his apartment where he expects a blonde, but her door is open and he leans against the frame and examines the changes she’s made to the room, glances at the spandex shorts she wears—and the tattoo, perhaps for the first time—before appraising her hair.

He’s a man and she’s bought into the stereotype a bit, because she’d expected him to just glance and say “looks good” before retreating to his own room, but here she stands in the middle of her bedroom, laundry basket on her hip, watching him stare at her and not even a little unnerved.

Suddenly, Cullen flushes and his hand is rubbing the back of his neck. “It looks… nice,” he finally says, his eyes lingering on her tattoo once more before finding the ceiling. Daphne smirks at this fun development.

“Yeah?” she asks, wondering if she can fish more out of him. He clears his throat.

“It’s pretty,” he says. “You’re—ah. It’s… pretty.” His cheeks are pink and her jaw clenches from the effort it takes not to smile outright.

“Thanks,” she says, voice soft, and she can’t help but draw comparisons between him and Neil, who hadn’t thought to make any comments on her appearance at all beyond “you’re smarter than you look.” Appearances aren’t everything, she knows; but it still feels good to have a grown man trip over his words.

He nods, maybe more to himself than to her, and with a final sweep over her face—and legs—he pushes off the door frame and disappears down the hall, leaving Daphne feeling a little closer to whole for the first time in two years.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I bet you thought you'd seen the last of me.
> 
> Here's this, four months after the second chapter, and way longer than it needed to be. Unfair to you readers, I started this project on kind of a whim with no real plan and at a point in my life with a lot of instability-- That's changed, I think, and I have more time to dedicate to writing. I want to thank y'all for your endless patience with me. Your interest and attention means the world. If you're interested in more, come hang out with me on tumblr @lonely-spaghetti. there's an entire tag of drabbles and meta. It's neat shit.


	4. Enter Prospero

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cullen gets a new case and learns a little more about Daphne; a new player enters the scene.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi, I'm alive

“How much longer am I gonna be here?”

Cullen’s hands freeze on the keys and he swivels his unamused gaze to the teenager leaning against his desk as comfortably as he can with one hand cuffed to a chair.

“Keep interrupting me,” Cullen drones, tabbing over to the next field without looking. He’s processed enough delinquents that the task often invades his dreams. “We’ll see how long it takes.”

“Police brutality,” the teen sneers, rattling the cuffed hand against the chair. “This is a hate crime.”

Cullen arches a brow. “Indulge me.”

“I’m an elf, obviously.” He shakes his head as if to accentuate long, slim ears, but it just sends his mop of copper curls flying into his face.

“And if a dwarf were also caught on camera lifting one thousand sovereigns’ worth of video production equipment, he’d be in this chair instead. And so here we are. Date of birth?”

“Go fuck yourself.”

Cullen makes no outward sign of frustration, but his patience is wearing thin. “Cool. I’ll just check your wallet.” He reaches over to the plastic bag containing the teen’s belongings, but the door to the captain’s office swings open.

“Rutherford, let Houser finish that. I’ve got a case for you.”

The teen slouches in his seat with a huff and tries to trip Cullen as he stands, but Cullen steps over his legs with an unimpressed glare.

“Captain?”

“Body,” he responds gruffly, combing down his mustache. Even after six months in South Reach, Cullen knows little about the man beyond his mustache and his dog, a hulking mastiff that he brought to one precinct barbecue in the spring. “John Doe in the alley between Griff’s and Barfly.”

“What, a transient?” Cullen asks, some of his hope deflating. His mind fills with an immediate rebuke—a person is a person and everybody deserves equal dignity and care when handling a case, but four out of five cases involving transients in alleys go unsolved.

“If I knew, I wouldn’t be sending you. Take Harding with you.”

Cullen bites his tongue and turns on his heel, closing the door behind him, and ignoring the sneer that the elf from before tosses in his direction.

“Lace,” he calls across the bullpen, looking for a red braided bun. Her head jerks up from a file and she has a spark in her eyes, shoving out of the chair with alacrity as Cullen wordlessly jerks his head in the universal sign for ‘follow me.’

“What do we got?” she asks, rubbing her hands together.

“Captain says it’s a body.”

“Woof. You drive.”

“Forget your booster seat today?” he asks with a smirk, throwing on his aviators when they step into the sunlight. She punches him in the arm and tries to conceal her laugh.

The drive down to the town square is short—Harding barely has enough time to find a radio station without commercials by the time Cullen parks at the mouth of the alley in question, right across from the historic courthouse and in between two bars popular with the college crowd.

There’s a small crowd behind the tape—because of course there is—and Cullen and Harding shove past several snooping passersby with phones drawn before they can duck under and get into the alley. The buildings are tall enough to shield the scene from the late morning light, and it’s several degrees cooler in the shade. Cullen pockets his aviators.

“What have we got here?” Harding asks to the approaching officer as Cullen stands over the body. Male—or at least male-presenting—well-dressed, with slicked back hair, wearing a sport coat and khaki slacks. He accepts a pair of gloves from the medical examiner and wriggles them on as he kneels, scanning the victim’s face and neck for any signs of trauma. The skin is pale, deep shadows beneath sunken eyes, cracked lips, dried spit in the corner of his mouth. Cullen picks up both hands to find knuckles unmarred.

Young, well-dressed, unscathed… all the signs point to overdose.

“No ID on him at all?” Cullen asks, looking up at Harding. She shrugs, chews on the end of her pen as the other officer fills her in. As he looks over the body once more, he notices a line of stitching in the inside of the victim’s sport coat, clumsily sewn, as if an amateur had done it. It’d be a good place for a stash—

He reaches in and finds a small plastic bag of gleaming red rock, and the headache that had followed him since this morning intensifies tenfold.

He drops it onto the victim’s chest and peels his gloves off before massaging the bridge of his nose.

“Sweep for a wallet,” he announces, scrubbing his hand along his jaw. “And get the body loaded. This kid wasn’t killed by anybody.” Not a homicide—very likely an overdose, but they’ll have to wait for the autopsy to be sure. Cullen would put money on the cause of death being the red lyrium he’d just found in the victim’s pocket.

Several questions come to mind:

_How_ did red lyrium get this far south when it was barely in Kirkwall before he left?

Assuming this kid was a civilian, where did he get his hands on it in the first place?

Is there a wider distribution problem that the city hasn’t caught onto yet?

And finally…

“Am I going to have to call Hawke?” he asks himself, not loudly enough for Harding to hear. He doesn’t notice that she’s gone a shade paler herself and is furtively typing something out on her phone, tapping a button with a loud _snap_ of nail against screen before pocketing it discreetly.

This is about to get complicated, isn’t it?

* * *

_“Go for Rylen.”_

Cullen leans back in his chair, relieved that someone up north has finally picked up.

“Rylen, it’s Cullen. I’ve got a problem.”

A chuff of laughter crackles over the receiver. _“Now why’dye always call me when you’ve got a problem, eh? Never ‘Rylen, I’m sendin’ ye a keg of Ferelden’s finest,’ or ‘Rylen, Mia’s finally gotten a divorce’—”_

“I wouldn’t fit in a keg,” Cullen says, managing a joke despite the tension in his neck. “And not only is Mia still married, but she’s pregnant again.”

_“Maker’s gnarled arse,”_ Rylen curses. Cullen rolls his eyes. _“How many is that now, six?”_

“Uh. Two.”

_“Close enough. What’s your problem, another coup you need organizing?”_

“I did not—never mind. We’ve got a body in South Reach. Autopsy results show the red stuff.”

A low whistle rings in Cullen’s ear. _“Sounds like a bird problem.”_

“Funny enough, birds that big don’t fly this far south.” Cullen sighs, leans forward and pushes his glasses up to rub the bridge of his nose. “Have you heard or… seen anything at all?”

_“Not that I’m aware of, mate.”_

“I figured as much. One more question.”

_“Eh?”_

“Do you have any way of getting in touch with Tethras?”

* * *

They manage to identify the body and inform next of kin by the end of the next day: George McDermott, a college student originally from Gwaren, spotless record. No prior military service, no family in the Order, no way to access any lyrium, let alone the red stuff.

No sign of Varric, either. All his Kirkwall contacts are off-grid. Cullen forces himself to unclench his jaw before he cracks a molar. He wonders if it’s worth contacting Cassandra; after all, she met him whilst poking around in Kirkwall in the aftermath of the bombing.

Thousands of hows and whys echo in Cullen’s mind when he finally goes home, having spent the previous night in the break room at the station. His back aches more so than usual, an unwelcome reminder that he’s not twenty-five anymore. He’s kept a mental tally of which pains are stress and poor care and which are lyrium-induced, pointedly ignoring the self-manifested ticker of ‘days since his last dose’ that blinks idly behind his eyes.

His next one is supposed to be tomorrow, and even smaller than the last. He doesn’t feel any worse than usual, and as he fits his house key into the front door and listens for the sounds of paws skidding across hardwood, he wonders if maybe he’d be able to skip it.

The door swings open to a prancing Jim, and for a moment the stress melts off his back and his only concern is getting seventy pounds of golden retriever off him. He knocks Jim down and scratches behind his ears, not minding the thumping tail against his calves or the sticky kisses Jim manages to leave on his neck.

Cullen looks up from his dog to find his roommate arched over the back of the couch, hands on the floor, face red with an irritated expression.

Daphne looks at him. “Hey,” she says shortly, wiggling so her feet find purchase on the cushions. Cullen finds himself arching a brow.

“Uh. Hi.”

“I’m trying to pop my back,” she says, answering the question he didn’t have the heart to ask. Cullen nods, depositing his bag in its usual chair, eyes glancing over Daphne’s laptop on the dining room table, with enough open tabs to give him anxiety. He notices a job board, but again, says nothing. “I’m usually the one everyone comes to when they need their backs popped, but funny thing about spines—” She pushes off the couch cushion into a handstand, her shirt falling over her face, before she her legs cartwheel to the side and she’s standing, “—is that you can never pop your own the way you want to.”

Cullen sighs. “Come here,” he says, shrugging his jacket off. Daphne gives him a cautious once-over.

“Is this the part where you murder me for my skin? Because I’ve been waiting for this. I took some kickboxing classes, I can—”

“Do you want your back popped, or not?” he asks with a laugh. Her teeth snap shut.

“Oh.” She tucks a strand of dark hair behind her ear. “Yeah, alright.”

She steps in front of him and looks around as if to ask what he needs her to do, so he takes her shoulders and turns her around. “Cross your arms.”

“Ooh, I love this!” she says, crossing her arms.

_Why are you doing this?_

He leans down and wraps his arms over hers as she breathes in, and as he stands to his full height she goes limp in his arms, her back cracking loudly, accompanied by a satisfied sigh. Her hair is in his face. It smells like jasmine. Her toes dangle on the ground and her ass is right—

He drops her and rolls his neck out.

_Why did you do that?_

Her face is still flushed, but she twists back and forth with her elbows out. “Thank you,” she sighs, “that’s been bothering me for days.”

“Don’t mention it,” he says offhandedly, curiosity getting the better of him as he looks down at her laptop. “Quit your job?” he asks, only mildly concerned that she’d have no way of paying her share of rent. As little as she talks about it, he knows she grew up a socialite. He’s willing to bet she’s not hard-pressed for cash, especially considering she’d paid a deposit _and_ first month up front… in cash.

Daphne pulls a face and flops down at the table, scooting it towards her. “I hope so. I just… I hate academia.” Cullen does his best not to laugh in her face. “What?” she asks shortly.

“Nothing, I was a history major.”

“No.”

Cullen does laugh this time. “I was. Personal interest in military history and global politics, but I minored in literature.”

Daphne huffs. “I was a kinesiology minor. But my sentiment stands. I _hate_ academics.”

“I thought you hated academia.”

“I’m all for learning,” she amends, “but seriously, the people I work with. So pretentious and uptight. Like we’re all nerds about stuff! Ask me about costuming and stage production! Ask me about how dance shifted with music when the modernists started getting popular! I _know_ things, but since it’s not, I don’t know… Ptolemy and whatever, I’m painted as this Barbie jock—was that thunder?”

Cullen blinks, half-immersed in her (somewhat adorable) tangent as it halts in its tracks. A low, distant rumble fills the silence and Jim whuffs uneasily at his feet.

“Yeah, a system is working its way off the Frostbacks. It’s been dry lately, we need it.”

Daphne chews the inside of her cheek, a habit Cullen has noticed she falls into when she withdraws or becomes contemplative. “Lovely.”

“Not a fan of rain?”

Her face darkens almost imperceptibly as she bores holes into the laptop without really seeing the screen, but Cullen watches—fascinated—as she schools her face into something casual.

“Tired of it. I guess I didn’t do my research. Ostwick got a lot of coastal rain and I thought I picked South Reach as a reprieve.”

Cullen snorts. “South Reach is in the middle of the Fereldan hill country and settled between two rivers. This is the most flash flood-prone area in the continent.” Daphne’s jaw tightens.

“Lovely,” she repeats.

It’s like Cullen is watching her build the walls up in real time, and he can’t help but feel responsible for it. “It’s not going to be a big storm,” he assures her. “Back to you hating your job, though. What are you hoping for?”

She eyes him carefully before clicking a few places on her laptop. “Not sure. Ideally? There’d be a studio hiring for choreographers or teachers, but it’s impossible in a town this small with no connections.”

“I didn’t even know South Reach _had_ dance studios.”

Daphne rolls her eyes. “Didn’t you grow up here?”

“No, actually, I grew up in Honnleath.”

She blinks at him.

“Small farming town about an hour away from here. My family moved here when my dad died. None of the kids wanted to take over the farm, so we sold it and moved.”

She hums. “Sorry about your dad,” she says, and Cullen shrugs.

“It was a long time ago.”

Thunder rumbles, louder now than before. Daphne shuts her laptop and looks over his shoulder, out the window overlooking the patio. “Sounds fast,” she murmurs. “Maybe it’ll blow over without dropping anything on us.”

Cullen hums. “Maybe. As it is, Jim will be more than happy to provide thunder cuddles. He hates storms.”

As if on cue, Jim stands and stretches with a groan before wandering down the hall to hide in the bathroom, as he always does when a storm rolls in.

* * *

If she had her way, she’d spend the rest of her life on this assignment.

The locals who call the sleepy ski town of Haven home are friendly—friendly enough that a drip coffee to go from the café next to the ski lift is on the house now, though that may be because the barista has a thing for tall, imposing blondes—and the temple she’s digging out holds no shortage of secrets. It’s sunny more days than not, too warm for snow to form and collect, but the highest peaks in the range are tipped white and gleam in the sunlight when the clouds manage to part.

Her favorite part of her morning is probably the lift to the temple. She wakes up earlier than anyone else on her team and is always the first to make it up to the dig site (coffee in hand), and she relishes in the quiet moments between civilization and work where it’s just her and the hum of the ski lift, inching up the mountain in silence as the sun rises before the excavation crew inevitably destroys the calm with their digging and shouting.

The job is straightforward enough. She and her team are to dig out the Temple of Sacred Ashes to discover the truth of the explosion in the ninth age that killed the Divine and left no survivors. Historians call it terrorism, as the explosion occurred on the day of Divine Justinia’s Conclave, a summit meant to put an end to the war between the Circle of Magi and the Chantry. Centuries of speculation have drawn few conclusions, and academic circles are evenly divided between who could have been behind the massacre.

An Inquisition was formed to find those responsible and restore order, but without someone willing to lead it and with the organization facing opposition from Orlais and Ferelden—as well as a headless Chantry refusing to cooperate—the effort fizzled out before anything conclusive could be discovered.

The temple ruins have been carefully guarded from looters and explorers, a move that’s aroused suspicion for decades—what does the Chantry have to hide? The official statement is that it’s meant to honor the lives lost; but one could argue that souls a thousand years dead have had plenty of time to move on.

The lift crests the top of the mountain and slows enough so she can hop out and jog away, but her mouth goes dry at the sight awaiting her: Equipment and tools are covered in paint and mud, some splintered beyond recognition, dirt upturned and strewn about the site, artifacts—missing.

With a shaking hand, she reaches into her pocket to pull out her phone, first to snap some pictures of the dig site and then to make a call. It rings once before the receiver crackles.

_“Sir, are you not my father?”_

She inhales quickly, searching for the line, and then: “Thy mother was a piece of virtue, and she said thou wast my daughter.”

“Verified. One moment.”

She takes a quick step toward the temple, straining to read the painted letters over the tarp the team had placed over the entrance: **HEAL A REALM SHORN**

_“Nightingale.”_

“Nightingale, it’s Prospero. We have a problem.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The cryptic phone conversation is lines from _The Tempest_. As always, a thousand thanks for your continued thanks and support. A shorter chapter because I was hellbent on doing something in May and I'm eager to move on to the meat of this story. At this point, you might be getting the idea that this is not just a cute roommate fun time romp. You would be correct.


	5. Sharing is how we make friends

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cullen goes to a soccer game and somebody gets punched in the face.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Enjoy roughly eight-thousand words of nonsense, because I feel bad about how long it's been (and I couldn't find a good place to stop).

“-- _starting to creep up, but they’re all on ex-templars, dishonorably discharged._ ”

“All overdoses?”

“ _Yes. Only pattern is that all three were discharged during the cull following the Kirkwall riots._ ”

Someone is targeting disgraced ex-templars and poisoning them with red lyrium. Whether it’s by force or through supplying them with enough for them to kill themselves remains to be seen. Cullen wonders if he knows any of the victims.

“Are they all from Kirkwall?”

“ _Funny thing, no. One’s from Ostwick and the other two’re Starkhaven.”_ Rylen’s voice takes a sorrowful twist and Cullen’s relief turns to guilt.

“I’m sorry, Rylen. Did you know them?”

“N _ot well. They were good people. One of them was barely twenty-four._ ”

Cullen balks. That’s not nearly enough time for tolerance and addiction to set in. Did it start with tainted templar stock, or was a dishonorably discharged templar forced into dire straits?

From the other side of his car, Cullen hears the crowd cheer. He looks up to find his younger brother approaching him with a cigarette held loosely between his fingers.

“I have to go, Rylen. Keep me updated.”

_“Aye, will do. Be careful.”_

Cullen sighs. “You too, man.”

Cullen waits until Rylen hangs up, stows his phone in his pocket, and leans against his car as his brother approaches.

“Sorry. Work problem.”

Branson shrugs, not personally bothered. “Mia told me to come check on you. Anything you can talk about?”

Cullen weighs his options and decides that worrying his family isn’t worth the desire to get a weight off his chest, so he winces and shakes his head. Bran nods and takes a drag of his cigarette. The cluster headache in Cullen’s temple pulses, so he reaches through his open window into the glove compartment and pulls out his own pack. “Got a light?” he asks Branson.

Bran digs through his pocket with raised eyebrows, passing a red lighter with interest. “When’d you start smoking?” he asks.

With the cigarette between his lips, Cullen flicks the lighter and cups his hand over the flame against the autumn breeze. He holds the first inhale for a long moment before releasing. “Since I quit lyrium,” Cullen answers shortly, tossing the lighter back at him. “Do _not_ tell your sisters.”

“That you’re smoking or you quit?”

Cullen takes a drag. “Both.”

He’s not proud of it, but he figures that cancer is a better way to go than insanity or addiction. The nicotine takes the edges off the spike in his temple.

They smoke in silence, both idly watching their nephew’s soccer game from the parking lot, until Bran asks without looking back at Cullen: “Why’d you quit?”

Cullen finishes the cigarette and flicks it into a nearby ashtray resting on top of a trash can. “It’s the only thing holding me to the Order,” he says. “And I’m not going to let them take any more of my life than they already have.”

He looks over and finds Bran staring at him with a face eerily similar to his own, the only difference being a shorter nose and dark blue eyes. He ends his appraisal by reaching into his pocket and pulling out a tin of mints, an offering on a few levels between brothers. “So you’re pretty fucked up, huh.”

Cullen huffs a laugh and leans against his car, popping a mint into his mouth. “Yeah, I guess.” He crosses his arms and gestures at Bran with a nod. “What’s up with the bun?”

Bran frowns. “It’s cool. Girls like long hair.”

“Do they.”

“Fuck off,” he says with a laugh, shifting on his feet, a light blush across his cheeks. With his hands shoved into his pockets and the grin playing on his face, he goes from twenty-five to seventeen in front of Cullen’s eyes, and the older brother feels a pinch of loss for the years he’d spent in Kirkwall. He missed most of his younger siblings’ milestones, barely knows the young man standing in front of him with the so-called ‘man-bun’ and cutoff shorts in the middle of the coldest Autumn the Reach has had in a decade.

“Remind me what you’re doing in grad school,” Cullen says suddenly, throwing Bran off. He notices that his brother looks pleased, if not surprised.

“Ethnomusicology.”

“Interesting.”

“Really?” he asks. Cullen shrugs.

“Yeah, from what I can pick apart by the name. Band still together?”

Bran hesitates, mouth working silently, before he says “Yeah. Actually we’re playing tonight at the Foothold.” He pauses again. “You should come.”

Cullen considers it for a moment before nodding. It’s Friday, he doesn’t work tomorrow, and he could use the distraction. He doesn’t know the last time he’d actually gone out. “What time?”

“There’s a set before us, but we start at ten-thirty,” he says, grinning suddenly. “Not too late for you, old man?”

Cullen pushes off his car to lob a lazy punch at Bran’s stomach, which he dodges. “Fuck off,” he says, throwing Bran’s oh-so creative insult back at him. Both of them are grinning and Bran shoves Cullen’s shoulder as a miniature human with sweaty blond curls comes hurtling at both men’s calves.

“UNCLES!” the miniature human screeches, arms akimbo, as Cullen disengages from his brother to sweep the child into his arms. “We lost!” he triumphantly announces as Cullen hoists him onto his hip. Mia, her husband, and their youngest sister Rosalie approach at a slower pace, the former with a hand on her very pregnant belly and the latter beaming at the rare display of brotherly affection they’d walked up to.

“Great job, Benji!” Bran cries, offering a celebratory high-five in spite of the team’s defeat.

“Yeah, Ben’s just happy he scored a goal,” Mia’s husband Gareth announces, watching his son squirm in Cullen’s arms.

“Not my fault we lost,” Ben proclaims loudly. The group of adults laughs at his dismissal and he grins, pleased that he made the grown-ups laugh. “Da said I get ice cream if I score. I scored. I get ice cream.” He looks around the group of adults and then at Cullen. “Put me down, please.”

Cullen pretends to look wounded and lets Ben climb off of him, cooler in the breeze for the lack of sticky five-year-old on his body. He runs between his mother and father’s legs for the ice chest another parent had set up, intent on claiming his weekly juice box and clementine, Gareth sighing and walking off after him, leaving the four siblings to stare at each other. Cullen always thought it was amusing how similar they all look, with varying shades of blonde hair, Mia and Bran with their mother’s blue eyes and Rose and Cullen with a close approximation of their father’s golden brown. Of the four, Rose’s hair is the wildest, with tight sandy blonde curls cascading down the small of her back, often held back with a long scarf. She smiles brightly between her siblings.

“What’s everyone’s plans tonight?” she asks.

“Well,” says Bran, checking his phone, “I gotta get to Willy’s place and load the van.” He looks over at Rosalie. “You coming tonight?”

She shakes her head and pouts. “I have a lab report due at midnight and it’s only half-done.”

Bran sucks air through his teeth and winces. “Sucks. Come out if you get it finished.”

“I probably won’t,” she sighs, wrapping an arm around Bran as he prepares to leave.

“See you tonight?” he asks of Cullen, who nods and rocks back on his heels. Bran smiles slightly and turns over his shoulder to jog to his car.

“You’re going out tonight?” Mia asks, stunned. “You?”

Cullen glares at her. “What about it?”

“You just. Never go out,” she says, stunned. Rose crosses her arms and makes a show of listing to the side, as if she’s about to fall over.

“You never go out and now when I _have_ to stay in and write a paper, you decide to go out? Do you know how long I’ve been wanting to go drinking with you?” she whines, stomping her foot for good measure.

“Hopefully only a year, seeing as you’re twenty-two and I’m a police officer,” Cullen says dryly, arching a brow in her direction. The comically exaggerated frown dissolves from her face and she shoves her hands into her pockets, suddenly fascinated in the bugs crowding one of the streetlights.

“Yeah, what about that paper?” Mia asks archly. “Don’t you have--” she checks her wrist for the time, “about four hours to finish it?”

“Shiiiit.” Rose throws herself at Cullen’s chest for a hug, barely giving him enough time to wrap an arm around her before she’s at Mia’s side kissing her cheek, and off with a wave and a “love you!” tossed over her shoulder.

Mia watches Rose climb into her station wagon before turning her attention to Cullen. Behind her Ben and Gareth wrestle in the grass, the former protecting his clementine like a dragon with a golden egg.

“Are you sleeping?” she asks suddenly. Cullen sighs.

“Yes, Mia.”

“You look tired.”

“I had a long day at work.”

She hums, clucks her tongue behind her teeth. “I don’t know why you don’t go to grad school and teach. Didn’t you used to want to teach?”

Cullen huffs a laugh. “You think I’m tired _now?_ ” she rolls her eyes and he considers what she said. “I wanted to teach for about six months in seventh grade. I think I just liked being able to boss around Bran.” She fights a smile, arms crossed over her swollen belly. “I’m fine, Mia,” he insists. “I promise.”

Gareth approaches, a squalling five-year-old tossed over his shoulder. The wind picks up and Cullen smells citrus. Cullen leans through the space between them to kiss her cheek and feels an arm wrap around his back and hold him in place. Despite being two years his senior, Mia is a whole head shorter than him, and she sniffles against his shoulder.

“These fucking hormones,” she whispers tearfully into his shoulder. Cullen laughs and rubs her shoulder.

“Three more months,” he reminds her.

“Yeah, and then I’ll be dealing with postpartum bullshit and breastfeeding and jealous big brother--”

“He has a dog, he’ll be fine--”

“I’m just really happy you made it out,” she mumbles, nuzzling into his shoulder.

That tendril of guilt twists in his gut again. “So am I,” he says softly above her. She extracts herself from his hold and gives him a watery smile.

“I’m serious, I’m about to cut this kid out of me.” Cullen can’t help but toss his head back and laugh. “How did Mum do four?”

“A saint, that woman,” Cullen agrees. He suddenly remembers his pack of cigarettes on the passenger seat and casually leans against the window to block it from Mia. “Think you’ll want more?” he asks, and she vehemently shakes her head.

“I’ve got one of each, I’m good. Just cut the kid and her house out with it.”

“Thinking of names?”

She huffs. “I like Meredith, he thinks it sounds too dour. He wants something like Kaylee, but that doesn’t _age_ well.”

“Well, you have three months to figure it out,” Cullen points out, to which she rolls her eyes. Gareth joins her with a pouting Ben over his shoulder.

“He squished the clementine so he wouldn’t have to share,” Gareth explains, “so he’s not getting ice cream anymore.”

“You said I get ice cream if I score,” Ben points out from behind Gareth’s back, “you never said I had to share my orange!”

“Sharing is how we make friends, Benji,” Mia says tiredly. “We reserve the right to withhold ice cream privileges if you’re rude.” She turns to Cullen. “Goodnight, dear brother. Never have children.”

He and Gareth wave goodbye, and as Gareth turns and exposes Ben, the child looks at Cullen and grumbles, “this family is so _mean._ ”

Cullen nods solemnly out of solidarity and gets in his car as soon as the little family is out of eyeshot, stowing his cigarettes back in his glove box and rolling the window up. The exodus out of the park is slow as other families collect their children and depart at the same time, and by the time Cullen is on the road, the sun has fully sunk beyond the horizon and the street lights are on, and it’s eight-thirty by the time he pulls into the spot outside his apartment.

There aren’t any lights in the window, he notices, and wonders if Daphne’s out for the night.

He still can’t figure her out. Warm and cold in equal measure, aloof to the point of being standoffish, but spontaneously chatty if her mood permits--he thought growing up with women and his sporadic dalliances in Kirkwall had given him a solid understanding of the female mind, but nothing in his experience had prepared him for his distinctly mercurial roommate.

He opens the front door to darkness, but there’s a light coming from the hallway. _Home after all._

Cullen appears in her door frame and knocks against the door, finding Daphne at her desk with her laptop open. Daphne looks into her laptop over her shoulder at him and he notices her webcam is streaming, connected to a blonde woman who also appears to be sitting at a desk. Jim is lying on the floor in front of her bed, no doubt pouting that she didn’t let him up onto it.

“Hey,” she says, angling her laptop’s camera to cover him more fully. “Claire, look, it’s my roommate.”

 _“Hey roommate,_ ” the woman now known as Claire says cheerfully. “ _Colin, right_?”

Daphne scoffs. “ _Cullen_. I’ve told you at least a dozen times.” She screws a lid onto a small bottle and mutes her screen before turning to Cullen. “Sorry, what’s up? How was the game?”

“Ah, they lost.”

“Shame,” she says with exaggerated pity.

“Yeah, well, they’re five-year-olds, so I’m sure they’ll be fine.” Daphne laughs and looks down at Jim, who looks at her and huffs before laying his head on the ground and looking pitifully at Cullen. “Don’t look at me, it’s not my bed to let you onto.”

She snorts. “He’s been supervising my manicure.” She wiggles glossy black nails at him and he nods solemnly.

“He has years of management experience.” They share a moment of staring at his clearly abused dog before he asks, “plans tonight?”

Daphne gestures around her with a flippant wave. “You’re looking at ‘em.”

Cullen takes in the ensemble consisting of an oversized t-shirt and cotton shorts and makes a decision. “Come out with me.”

She blinks. “Tonight?”

“No, I thought we’d wake up around eight tomorrow and hit the bars then,” he says, to which Daphne scowls. He grins and says, “My brother is playing at a bar and invited me out, and now I’m inviting _you_ out.”

She chews her lip and appraises her nails. “Yeah, alright. What kind of bar?”

“Eh. Sort of grungy, they’ve got billiards and a karaoke room.”

She looks over his outfit and nods. “Give me twenty minutes.”

His previous experience with women had taught him that twenty means at least thirty-five, but twenty minutes later to the second, Daphne emerges wearing a black cap-sleeved bodysuit and a forest green cordouroy mini-skirt, black tights, and royal blue wedge-heeled boots, winged eyeliner, and half of her hair piled on her head in a topknot.

“It’s supposed to be chilly tonight,” he warns, despite secretly appreciating the tightness of the bodysuit, to which she holds up a green and blue plaid flannel Cullen hadn’t noticed before. Daphne tosses it on, rolls the oversized sleeves to the elbow, and ties the ends of the flannel at the high waist of her skirt.

“Looks good?” she asks, doing a small turn, heels clacking. Cullen nods and shrugs at the same time, not daring to comment on the length of her legs or the light catching in her hair, which isn’t something he noticed until this moment.

Not a development he’s keen on.

She huffs a laugh and pulls two cards from her wallet before shoving them into the shallow pocket her skirt provides and throwing her hands onto her hips. “I’m ready,” she announces, more to herself than to him, and Cullen rises from the kitchen barstool and grabs his keys.

She’s quiet in the car as he finds a radio station that isn’t commercials, but as soon as he’s about to reach for a terrible small-talk question, she asks, “So what kind of music does your brother’s band play?”

Cullen chuckles. “I’ll be honest, I have no idea.” She laughs.

“What’s he play?”

“Ah… guitar.”

“Lead or rhythm?”

Cullen looks over at her, her face illuminated by his car’s on-board computer, a curious look on her tilted face as she plays with the brass buttons lining the front of her skirt. “Both?”

She hums. “A hot-shot, huh?”

Cullen laughs. “Yeah, a little.”

“It’s always the singer or guitarist. They’re the hotshot or the player, and most often, tragically both.” She flips the visor down and fishes a tube of lipstick out of her boot.

“I think he’s more a hotshot than a player,” Cullen says, stopped at a light a block from the city square. A gaggle of young women in tight dresses and impossibly high heels crosses in front of him. Daphne watches them cross silently.

“I have that dress,” she comments idly as the light turns green. “I’ve never been here, you know, other than that one date.”

It’s been about three months since she moved to South Reach, so this comes as somewhat of a surprise to Cullen. “You’re not missing much. The central square is mostly college kids, but there are a few places a few blocks off that locals tend to stay at.”

“And which one is the bar your brother’s playing at?”

Cullen hums. “Geographically the former, but culturally a mix.”

“Shit.”

“What?”

She pats her boots, and then her hips as well as she can while sitting. “I left my phone at home.”

“Planning on getting away from me?” He asks through a smirk, to which she blushes. He finds a spot a block away from where he needs to be and swings in before anyone else can take it.

“No,” she mutters defensively, “I just like having it on me.”

Cullen can’t decide if he’s offended her and the first thought through his head is _way to ruin a date._

Except… this isn’t a date.

Is it?

She’s dressed up, isn’t she, and he’s… well, he’s wearing what he wore to Ben’s game, slim-fit jeans and a red flannel over a shirt from a microbrewery in Redcliffe, which is more effort than a lot of men in South Reach put into their appearance, and now he’s wondering if she thought this was a date.

She opens her door and Cullen realizes that he’s been sitting in the car watching her check her makeup in his visor mirror silently.

_What fresh hell have I gotten myself into._

He joins her on the sidewalk and notices her lips in a way he wishes he hadn’t, their shape pronounced by the berry lipstick she’d put on in the car, and his stomach flips.

_Motherfucker._

She smiles at him. “Left or right?”

“Ah. Right.”

They walk in uneasy (at least on his part) silence past a crosswalk and right into a line leading into the bar he’s taking her to. There’s a street performer on another corner with a rig of LED lights surrounding his drum machine--a local, if Cullen recalls correctly, and he’s distracted by the jam session until he hears, “--another form of ID?” from the bouncer.

Daphne shifts her weight between her legs and looks at Cullen apologetically. “I have my debit card,” she offers, and he takes it, peruses both cards, and hands them back to her.

“Enjoy your night,” he says, hand already out for Cullen’s ID.

“Still blonde in your photo?” he asks when they descend the stairs into the basement bar. He looks into the crowd and spots Bran, who immediately starts pushing his way toward them.

“Yeah,” she says, annoyed, “and out of country. I get it, but… come on.”

“They’re ruthless with fakes,” Cullen says, nodding as Bran gets closer. “Here’s my brother.” She looks between the two as Bran barrels into Cullen for a hug, no doubt already drunk. “Bran, this is my roommate, Daphne.”

“ _This_ is your roommate.” he says rather than asks, and Cullen nods patiently. “Her.”

“Hi,” Daphne says, unsure of herself, one hand twisting together the fingers of her other hand.

“Bro, when you said your roommate was a librarian this is _not_ what I expected.” Bran makes a show of looking her over and says, “Congrats.”

Cullen shoves him off half-heartedly and he disappears into the crowd. “He’s not usually that big of a dick,” he says, apologizing, but Daphne shrugs him off.

“Guitar player,” she says by way of dismissing him, and Cullen laughs lightly.

“What do you like to drink, usually?” he asks, leading her to the bar with a hand on her back.

“I’m not picky,” she says, climbing onto a barstool. “Not huge on tequila or vodka, but I’m happy with most whiskey drinks.”

Cullen catches the bartender and asks for two Old Fashioned’s. He looks at Daphne to gauge her reaction, pleased to find her staring down at her lap with a small smile on her face. If this _is_ a date, he thinks to himself, he seems to have made a good call.

The house music goes quiet as Bran’s band begins a soundcheck and Cullen slides the bartender his card to start a tab, handing Daphne’s drink to her.

“They’re hit or miss here,” he says, “so if it’s bad don’t try to muscle through it. Bad whiskey is a felony in Ferelden.”

She snickers into her glass before taking a sip, appraising the drink. She nods and takes another sip. “It’s good,” she decides, plucking the muddled cherry out from beneath the ice to pop the stem in her mouth.

Cullen gives her a look. “You’re one of those show-offs, aren’t you?” he asks, voice raising in volume to compensate for the bass riff that bleeds from the stage to the bar. She nods stoically as her jaw works, tongue contorting the cherry stem in her mouth into a knot. Ten seconds later, she presents the knotted stem by opening her mouth and sticking her tongue out with an “aha!”

Cullen nods over the rim of his drink. “Impressive,” he says before taking a sip.

“Good evening, ladies--and only the ladies, because let’s be real, that’s who I’m trying to go home with tonight,” says the lead singer of Bran’s band, to several whoops and cheers. “I am Hesham, greetings--again, girls, what’s up, you all look delectable tonight--”

Daphne laughs out loud and looks at Cullen to mouth ‘ _player’_ at him before turning her attention back to the stage as the rest of the band takes their positions. He notices a trumpet and a trombone.

“I’m Hesham, and we are… Nobody You’d Like.”

Cullen questions the creativity of the band name as Bran sets up the song.

_“Queen of the streets…”_

Daphne sits sideways on the barstool, drink in hand, and Cullen leans on the back of it, his shoulder pressed to hers, as a crowd gathers around the stage.

“So, expert of the archetype,” Cullen starts in her ear, judging her interest level in the music to be mild to moderate, “which member of the band would you have gone for?”

“In _this_ band?” she asks, eyebrows raised, and Cullen shrugs.

“In general.”

“In general… the merch guy.”

Cullen huffs a laugh. “Oh really--”

“HEY!”

Daphne is pulled off the barstool by a short elven woman with pink hair, whose arms are thrown around Daphne’s shoulders as she forces her into a hug. Apparently, Daphne recognizes her as a friend, because she hugs her as well as she can with a glass in her hand. The two separate, but the elf slides her hands to Daphne’s waist.

“What the fuck,” Cullen hears, “how the fuck are you!”

“I’m great!” Daphne replies back, taking a sip of her drink.

“What are you doing here?” the elf asks, and Daphne gestures to Cullen.

“My roommate’s brother plays guitar.” She turns to Cullen. “Cullen, this is Asha. She did my hair.”

“Cool!” Asha says, and then, “I’m fucking the bassist,” an answer to a question neither Daphne nor Cullen asked.

Cullen and Daphne peek up at the stage to see a tall woman with dark skin and tousled bright silver hair slithering against her bass guitar.

“Nice,” Daphne comments, nodding appreciatively.

“Hey come dance with me!” Asha says, tugging on Daphne’s hand, who downs the rest of her drink before sliding it onto the bartop, mouthing an apology to Cullen as she’s dragged into the crowd. He shrugs and lifts his glass in a toast before taking the seat she’d been pulled out of, watching her dance.

Bran’s band is upbeat with influences of ska, which makes it easy to dance to, which makes it easy for Cullen to enjoy watching Daphne dance with Asha. The latter woman’s form of dance is to bounce around with the beat and toss her head around, but Daphne is a trained improviser and seems to find layers within the music to move with. She rolls her shoulders with the trumpet and flicks her hair back at one point to meet his gaze, at which point she swirls her hips before turning back to Asha and joining her in syncopated bopping.

Cullen orders another drink.

He looks over and finds that Daphne has discarded her flannel in favor of tying it around her waist, revealing between strands of shifting hair a long expanse of bare back and what might be another tattoo on her left shoulder. He wonders if she’s not wearing a bodysuit so much as an actual leotard, but the song ends and the lead singer is thanking the crowd for their time and attention.

Daphne is dragged back to the bar to do a round of shots.

Cullen paces this drink, knowing he’ll have to drive home tonight, especially after he watches Asha push a second shot into Daphne’s hand, to which she looks flustered but appears to thank her before downing it like a champ. Asha leans forward to kiss Daphne’s cheek and disappears into the crowd, leaving a slightly stunned Daphne to find Cullen at the bar and accept the seat he offers her.

“Bit of a hurricane,” Cullen comments as Daphne wipes the purple lipstick off her cheek with a napkin. Daphne nods with an incredulous smile. “Do you want another drink?”

Daphne looks at the beer taps and signals the bartender, orders herself an amber, and fans herself with her hand.

“They’re pretty good,” she says.

“Thanks!” Bran says, suddenly at Cullen’s elbow. His hair is out of its bun, loose around his shoulders, and the smile he throws at Daphne has her staring at him quizzically for a minute. “Let me buy you guys a shot.”

“I’m driving,” Cullen says by way of a rejection, and Daphne shakes her head with wide eyes.

“I just did two,” she says. “I’m good.”

Bran pouts, but he turns his head to Cullen. “You wanna go up and smoke?”

Cullen finishes his drink and looks over at Daphne, who is dancing in her stool to the house music and holding her beer to her chest. Yeah, he could use a smoke.

“I’m going upstairs for a minute,” he tells her, and she smiles brightly and nods before taking a long pull of her beer.

The fresh air clears his head and immediately replaces the image of swirling hips covered in plaid flannel. They walk down the sidewalk and out of the flow of foot traffic.

“She’s hot,” Bran says plainly.

Cullen bums a cigarette off him and lights it while glaring at him. He doesn’t speak until he exhales. “I know.”

“You gonna… do anything about it?”

Cullen suddenly needs three more drinks. “I don’t know.”

“I think she’s into you,” he hedges. Cullen glowers at him again.

“She just did two shots with your bassist’s girlfriend. She’s drunk.” He takes another drag. “Besides that, we live together. If it doesn’t work out, it’d… it would be weird.” There’s a power dynamic at play that he doesn’t want to abuse, and he hadn’t even entertained the idea of… her… like that until Branson said something. And suddenly all he can think of are rolling hips and berry-stained lips.

He takes a long drag and tosses the cigarette to the ground before grinding it into the pavement with the ball of his foot. Branson silently offers another and Cullen accepts with a baleful look, trying to think of anything beyond green cat-eyes and long shifting hair.

“Well… I wouldn’t leave her alone too long,” Bran warns before blowing a smoke ring. “She’ll get snatched up real fast.”

_Shit._

Cullen finishes his second cigarette a second too late, smudging it into the ground and stepping toward back toward the bar just in time to see Daphne barrel out of there with her flannel on again, an agitated look on her face. Someone is following her--a man, taller than her and belligerent, who reaches out to grab her upper arm.

Cullen sees red. He’s about to open his mouth and say something when she wheels around and connects her fist straight into the bigger man’s jaw, and the blood rushing in his ears clears enough for him to hear her say, “I _said,_ don’t you _fucking touch me!”_ The man wheels back and spits on the ground before lunging at her, but she sidesteps and shoves him into the pavement before making eye contact with Cullen.

To her credit, she looks horrified. Cullen looks back at Bran, who is slack jawed, his cigarette at risk of falling out of his hand, and delivers a curt “we’re leaving now.” Bran nods and waves, pointing at the man who is now being held back by the bouncer as a crowd starts to form around them, Daphne visibly shaking in the center.

“You fucking bitch!” the stranger howls, trying to fight off the bouncer. Daphne glares holes into him and lifts her chin, shoulders squared. “You fucking _cunt_ I will _kill--_ ”

Cullen’s wallet is out of his hand, badge drawn, before he says another word. “Finish that sentence,” he snarls, putting himself between the drunk man and Daphne, “so I can take you in for assault and public intoxication.”

A beat cop comes over, hand on his taser, no doubt drawn by the crowd and the shouting. Behind him, he hears a woman approach Daphne and ask if she’s okay, but he can’t hear her response. A squad car’s lights start flashing. “Rutherford,” the cop says in recognition. Cullen nods to him and shoves his wallet back into his pocket.

“Take care of this,” Cullen says, ignoring his nod as he approaches to control the situation. He turns around to Daphne, who has her arms curled around herself and looks like she’s about to start crying. “Come on, let’s go home.” His voice is harsher than he wants it to be, because she looks up at him before darting her eyes to the pavement and nodding quickly. The crowd parts to let them escape and he offers her his arm as they step into the street, which she takes, curling her hand around his bicep and walking as close to him as possible without tripping them both, silent and shaking beside him.

He opens the door for her and realizes that if he were drunk at all, the adrenaline had evaporated any effects of alcohol. He looks at her for a moment before starting the car, but she keeps her eyes trained in her lap, right hand cradled in her left, held close to her stomach.

_That’s not good._

“Are you okay?” he asks, voice finally soft. She blinks and nods silently. “Do you want me to take you to get your hand looked at?” She flexes her fingers and barely contains a wince, but shakes her head no. “Are you sure?” She nods again.

Cullen puts the car into gear and reverses out of the spot, making sure to take a route that doesn’t pass the bar on the way through the square. The ride is silent between them, the only sounds being the occasional sound of his blinker and the radio station playing local bands in the late hour.

They sit in the parking lot in front of the apartment for a minute.

“I closed your tab,” she finally says through a watery voice.

Cullen almost laughs, but he controls it. “Thank you.”

“Tipped like… maybe twenty percent?” He nods, but he doesn’t know if she can see it. He gets out and opens the door for her.

She leans against the exterior wall while he unlocks the apartment, eyes closed, hand cradled to her chest. She’s stopped shaking, at least, but she looks miserable. Cullen is furious with himself. He shouldn’t have left her alone; he shouldn’t have taken that second cigarette; he should’ve been faster. She looks up at him and mistakes the black look in his eyes for fault with her.

“I’m sorry,” she says in such a small voice that his heart chips. He opens the door and lets her inside.

“I’m not mad at you,” he says, turning the kitchen light on. “I’m mad that I left. He wouldn’t have approached you in the first place if I’d stayed with you.”

She watches him as he pulls an ice pack from the freezer and pats the counter. “Let me look at your hand.”

She hops up onto the island counter and holds her right hand out, palm down, for Cullen to inspect. She’s wearing a ring he hadn’t noticed earlier, one of those hammered steel pieces that cover the finger from the first to the second knuckle, covered in blood. He tries to slide it off, but Daphne hisses through her teeth and retracts her hand from his.

“What hurts?” he asks, taking her wrist back. She lets him turn her hand over and finds that the ring had cut into the crux where finger meets her hand, dried blood smeared across the upper pads of her palm. Cullen turns her hand over again and notices her knuckles are already bruising.

“The back of my hand,” she says, “into my wrist.”

“Bend your wrist as far back as you can.” She does so, unable to complete a ninety-degree angle, and bites her lip. “And bend it the other way.” She does this with little issue. Cullen turns her palm over and puts two of his fingers in her hand. “Squeeze my hand.”

She can only get so far before she groans a little and her fingers uncurl.

He wishes he had a tuning fork, but this isn’t the barracks in Kinloch and he’s not a medic anymore. He settles for running a thumb across her knuckles and over the back of her hand while she watches with her lower lip caught between her teeth, feeling for anything other than tissue swelling.

“I don’t think it’s broken,” he announces, finally looking at her. Had she been watching his face the entire time?

His face heats.

“Sprained?” she asks, granting him a small mercy and looking down at their hands, his still holding hers with the care and intimacy of a lover. He does his best not to drop her hand as if it scalds him, instead letting her take it back and offering her an ice pack.

“If it is, it’s mild. Ice it for a minute so we can get that ring off.” She places the ice pack over the back of her hand and disappears to the bathroom to look for alcohol and antibiotic ointment. He detours into his room to take his shoes and flannel shirt off, saying a quick hello to the dog whose slumber he disturbed, before ducking under the bathroom sink. He grabs the entire first aid kit in favor of fishing through it, returning to find Daphne bent over her lap and struggling with her boot one-handed.

“Need some help?” he asks, and she sighs and nods, offering him her foot. He rests it on his thigh and works through the knotted laces, loosening them and sliding the boot off her leg, his hand accidentally brushing her calf. He notices her shiver, but he doesn’t meet her gaze, instead picking up her other leg to untie her boot. He lets it fall to the floor and finds her struggling with undoing her half-bun. She sighs and tilts her head to the side so he can find the rubber band holding her hair in place.

“I feel like a little girl,” she mumbles with her eyes closed.

“Little girls don’t punch giant drunk assholes in the face and throw them to the ground,” he says absently, unwinding the elastic from her hair. The top layers of her hair, newly freed from their coil, cascade around her shoulders in loose curls.

“I’m still sorry I ruined your night,” Daphne says quietly.

“You didn’t,” he insists. He removes the ice pack from her hand and looks at the ring. “Bear with me. This needs to come off.” He looks at her until she nods her consent, screwing her eyes shut against his attempt to pull her ring off, humming through the pain when he slides it away and lets it clatter in the sink. Upon closer inspection, he can see where the metal broke the skin. “Ready for a sting?” he asks, holding up a bottle of antiseptic spray. She glares at him, but nods, holding her palm up.

He sprays and swabs antibiotic ointment over the cuts and instructs her to keep the area dry, since he can’t find any bandages that will fit the area without further irritating her.

“As for the hand itself,” he says, turning her palm over and inspecting it one last time, “I’m not wrapping it tonight, because I don’t want you to lose circulation. Take some naproxen for the swelling and try to keep it elevated while you sleep.”

She’s staring at his arm. “Is that a tattoo?”

He sighs, but holds his arm away from his body so she can read the script flowing vertically up the inside of his arm. “E dolore magna Gloria,” he says. She runs her finger over the script and tries to interpret it.

“Wait, I’m close. I forgot dolor.”

“Pain,” he supplies.

“From pain… great glory?” she asks, searching his face for the answer. He nods and she smiles at her small triumph.

“Ironic, considering I trained as a medic.”

“Appropriate,” she corrects. “Thank you.”

He offers her a tired smile and pushes a pill into her hand before pulling a water bottle out of the refrigerator.

“I don’t need to help you undress, do I?” he asks dryly, and they both turn their faces to the buttons lining the front of her skirt. Her cheeks darken.

“No,” she insists, “but I’d appreciate help dismounting.” He nudges her boots out from under her feet and offers a steadying arm for her to slide off the counter, but the ground is still farther than she anticipates and she tumbles into his chest with a soft ‘oof.’ His hand slides to her elbow, then to her waist, and she backs up an inch to look at him, first at his eyes and then his mouth. He resists the urge to wet his lips, suddenly dry at her scrutiny.

He begs her to look away, to not confuse what fledgling attraction might be there with a drunken savior complex, and she angles her face slightly before shaking her head and stepping out of his grasp.

“Thank you,” she repeats, tucking the water bottle in her elbow and picking up her boots with her good hand. “I’ll see you in the morning for that wrap.”

“Yeah,” Cullen says, pulling out a bottle of beer the second he hears her door close. He all but chugs the first one, burping quietly into the crook of his elbow, and sits at the island bar while he nurses the second one until he’s tipsy enough to be able to fall asleep. He checks his phone between sips of beer.

 _Message from: Branson Rutherford_  
_ << How is it that a five-foot-nothing librarian who looks like she’s 100 lbs soaking wet manages to put a grown-ass man in the ground? Where did you find her and where can I get one _  
_ << WOOF. _ _  
_ << lmk if she’s ok tho

Cullen rubs the bridge of his nose and takes a swig before responding:

 **> >She’s 5’6” at least, not a librarian, and she’s from Ostwick. She has three sisters. ** **  
** **> >She’s fine. Sleeping now. Get home safe?**

 _ << W O O F three sisters? Bye I’m moving to Ostwick _ _  
_ _ << yes dad made it home goodnight _

Cullen rolls his eyes and swipes through some emails before downing the last of his beer and turning the lights off, bolting the front door, stripping down to his boxer-briefs and falling into bed. Behind closed eyes he sees alternating visions of rolling hips and shifting hair, dodging an attack and sending a man into the pavement, and curious green eyes staring up at him.

His hand will not forget how soft hers was. He runs his palm down his jaw, but the stubble won’t scratch it out, and over his stomach, but he knows his skin well enough to ignore it, and over his sheet but the cotton pales in comparison to the petal-softness of her hand in his.

He tries not to imagine her hands on him, how soft they’d feel wrapping around--

_Fuck. Think of literally anything else._

His traitorous brain teams up with his slowly awakening cock to send him images of her lips, painted pink and leaving stains along his jaw, his neck, his--

A knock sounds.

It’s soft enough that it could have been Jim shifting on the floor beside him, but it happens again, three soft knocks, and then a soft voice calling his name through the door.

He curses the void and all the stars in the sky, and both moons for good measure, before turning his bedside lamp on and telling her to come in. He sits upright with his legs crossed and wills his erection to abate, and then she walks in wearing the same oversized t-shirt from earlier without the cotton shorts, and he wants a sinkhole to swallow him whole, but she looks concerned and she’s holding her hand to her chest like something is wrong, so he sits up a little straighter and beckons her forward.

“Did I wake you up?” she asks softly, sitting on the edge of the bed delicately.

“No, I just got to bed and couldn’t immediately fall asleep.” He holds his hand out. “What’s wrong?”

She exhales shortly and looks away as if embarrassed. “I fell asleep pretty fast, but I woke up and my hand is numb. So I kind of freaked out.” She holds her hand out and says, “Because I broke my wrist when I was about fourteen, you know, but it never went numb.”

Cullen laughs under his breath and pinches her fingertips. “Can you feel that?”

“Pressure, but that’s it.”

“Is it pins and needles?”

“Yeah, but I didn’t fall asleep on it. I woke up on my back.”

“What woke you up?”

Her eyes slide from his to the far wall. “I guess it’s still fresh in my mind. I sort of re-lived everything.”

Cullen hums and rubs the back of his neck, placing her hand over the duvet between them. “It’s normal, the tingling feeling. The swelling is just pressing on your nerves.”

“Sorry.”

“Don’t be,” he says quickly. “It’s disconcerting.”

She nods and stares at her lap for a moment, chewing on her lower lip. He wants to reach out and stop her, but settles on asking, “Do… you want to stay in here tonight?”

Her eyes brighten and she looks up hesitantly, then scans Cullen’s body as if noticing his near nudity for the first time. “Is it okay?”

“I wouldn’t have offered if it weren't,” he says, wondering if he should find his discarded shirt and put it on.

She hesitates and then nods, and Cullen clicks the lamp off before shifting into the cool side of the bed. With no light and no sight, Cullen is aware of every shift of her body as she settles into bed next to him, and he’s hype-raware of his own body and the distance between them, trying to navigate what’s appropriate without making her feel unwelcome. He can hear Daphne’s breaths, quiet and careful, and as his eyes adjust to the darkness he can make out the shadow of a stiff shoulder as she lies on her side with her back facing him. He shifts to face her, his arm in the space between them, but doesn’t move closer. He thinks he sees her glance over her shoulder, hears her take a steadying breath, and then roll onto her back, his arm fitting into the arch of her spine, and she waits.

He feels like he’s seventeen again, plotting his every move in an effort to get his arm around his date at the movie theater. Her eyelashes flicker against her cheeks and she’s about to turn back, so he runs his thumb along the curve of her waist and applies the barest hint of pressure--an invitation for her to roll one more time and face him, but light enough that she can pretend it didn’t happen, and he’s about to lament the sacrifice of his arm until she shifts once more and rolls into his chest, and they both let out breaths they didn’t know they were holding as Daphne finally relaxes against him, head curling into his shoulder as her uninjured hand finds his bicep.

“Thank you,” she breathes into the space between them, and Cullen thinks she might be the most grateful person he’s ever met with how much she’s thanked him tonight, but instead of saying anything he just hums and tucks her head under his chin and his top hand finds the curve of her waist.

And he thanks the void and all the stars in the sky--and both moons for good measure--that he had the poor judgment to invite her into his bed… and that she had the poorer judgment to stay.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ETA: Bran's band is modeled after an alt-ska band called Ripe. The song they started their set with is called [Talk to the Moon](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4UKnmcmao5Q) and it's a bop. The band name Nobody You'd Like is a joke between me and a friend, so if it sounds like a real band, I didn't intend any similarities.


	6. What you had and what you lost

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Daphne considers the men in her life.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Halloween, folks. Sorry I suck. 
> 
> The good news is that this was split from a much longer draft, so the next chapter is about 70% done. It just didn't make sense for the two scenes to go together, especially with how the following one is structured. You'll see what I mean. 
> 
> P.S. chapter title taken from 'Dreams' by Fleetwood Mac.

She’s in her old apartment in Ostwick, but her hand is wrapped in bandages and her hair is brown, so she knows somehow that she’s dreaming. She looks around her old living room, eyeing the gray suede sofa that she’d left in storage and the mid-century coffee table littered with condensation rings because her friends never used coasters. There’s a picture frame on the table, as there always has been, but she can’t focus too long on the faces within without her focus blurring. She can’t make out any of the details in any of her photographs. Daphne frowns.

She walks over to the window seat and picks up a half-finished macrame project, long abandoned by her roommate. A laptop rests on a nearby console, but the screen flickers with no discernible details. Daphne closes the laptop and puts the tangled project on top of it before curling into the window seat and looking up at the sky.

Patchy clouds scroll by, and Daphne watches long enough to make out identical shapes, as if the clouds themselves are a repeating pattern, a fabric stretching out across the sky and being pulled across by an invisible hand. She frowns slightly, but a noise from the kitchen distracts her.

“Morning, Dee.”

Thomas walks into the living room with two mugs of tea, and Daphne’s frown deepens. Why is she dreaming about _him?_

“Er. Morning.”

Despite her confusion, she accepts his proffered mug and he settles on the gray sofa. She watches him pull a coaster from the stack on the table and set his mug on it. “What are you doing here?” she asks with little ceremony. Thomas shrugs, blue-gray eyes bright in the hazy morning light. She blinks and looks down at the mug warming her bandaged hand.

Bandaged… Why?

“What happened?” he asks, and when she looks back up at him, he nods to her hand. She lifts a shoulder in a half-shrug. She can’t bring herself to remember.

“Are you dating?” she asks suddenly. Thomas splutters into his drink slightly, wipes some dribble from his chin.

“I… do you want me to be?”

“Yes,” she says, but something guilty and selfish twists in her stomach. Part of her wants him to be miserable, lonely and frustrated like she is, cursing his mistakes and drowning in solitude. But his misery would mean she'd have done that to him, and that doesn't settle well.

 _No_ , she realizes with finality; _I want him to meet someone_. She wants him to be happy, despite everything. Does he want _her_ to date?

Tom shrugs and Daphne realizes that she has no way of knowing if he _is_ dating, and so this fabrication wouldn’t know what to say. Instead, he asks: “What about you?”

Daphne shrugs, tries to remember anything about the last week, but her mind draws a blank. All she can remember is the last party she and Thomas went to, the last play they saw, the last dinner. Ella’s funeral.

“You should, you know.”

“What?” she asks, distracted.

“Date.”

She frowns again, worries idly about wrinkles, and looks out the window for a moment.

“Your hair looks good.”

She wants to laugh. Thomas had always preferred blondes, always sided with her mother when she contemplated dyeing it back to her natural color. They lapse into silence.

“Do you remember how you proposed?” she asks suddenly, sitting upright.

“Yes. You were cradling a bottle of wine to your chest and singing Les Miserables out the garden window.” Thomas smiles faintly into the middle distance as he conjures the memory.

“And you just looked over, and--”

“And I said, ‘we should get married.’”

“Equally as drunk as I was.”

“Every bit as serious, though.”

“You were so cavalier about it.”

“You were just as casual in saying yes,” he reminds her, and Daphne shrugs her concession.

“I didn’t realize I meant it,” she admits.

“Is that why it was so easy to leave?” he asks quietly, voice turning serious. Daphne frowns.

“You know why I left,” she says, standing up. Thomas watches her carefully. She looks beyond him for a door, suddenly realizing that she’s been in a doorless room the entire time.

“You didn’t have to leave, Dee.” Thomas was the only person who ever called her that. He stands suddenly, crossing the room to place his hands on her shoulders. “You didn’t have to end it.”

She can feel her face contort into something adjacent to disgust, but the hands on her shoulders start vibrating, violent and unceasing. Her skull rattles and Thomas flickers in front of her eyes--a specter the whole time, dismissed as easily as she’d conjured him, and Daphne opens her eyes to the brightness of another unfamiliar room, but she’s buried in duvet and crushed into the side of someone very warm and very much still asleep. Daphne blinks the remains of her dream away as reality settles around her.

It had been a phone ringing on the nightstand. She has a personal rule against answering the phone on a Saturday before ten in the morning, and while she has no idea what time it actually is, she’s inclined not to roll over and check the phone once the vibrations cease. At some point in the night, she and Cullen had separated and she ended up with most of his duvet, so she guiltily unwraps herself and drapes some over his bare chest, but his only reaction is to continue sleeping.

Daphne adjusts and curls into Cullen’s shoulder (perhaps a little selfishly--but it’s hard not to notice how his cheek rests against her hair just so) and assesses her situation.

She punched someone last night. Granted, she was fully justified and he had been following her up the stairs after she clearly expressed her indifference to his advances, but the fact remains that she had punched someone and thrown him into the ground; a feat that relied mostly on adrenaline and partially on the one class in self defense her brother made her take. Cullen had been livid--at first she thought his fury was directed at her, but later he admitted that he was angry at himself for not being with her to diffuse the situation sooner.

That, she has to admit, is sort of sweet. Daphne likes to think she’s an independent person, but she doesn’t know many people who would say no to someone defending their honor.

Cullen proceeded to clean her up, showing a side of him that she had no idea existed, even admitting that he originally trained as a templar medic. He’d gone from growly cop to gentle ex-medic, and now as she stares across the plane of his chest, she’s having a hard time deciding which is sexier.

_Why not both?_

She jumps slightly as the phone behind her starts ringing again, but she grits her teeth and ignores it. She notices that neither caller had left a voicemail, and decides it must not be important. Cullen stirs slightly, if only to mumble something under his breath and loop an arm behind her back. Her stomach flips and she thinks her ribcage might explode, but she lets herself shift with him and closes her eyes in case he rouses.

He’d sent her to bed and she managed to wriggle out of her skirt and tights one-handed, and found herself exhausted and sore once the adrenaline had worn off. It was easy to fall asleep.

But she’d relived the incident in technicolor. Out of body she watched the drunk man grab her, watched herself turn over her shoulder and throw her weight into the punch that connected to his nose. The only difference was that this time she hadn’t been fast enough to dodge; time slowed to a crawl as he lunged at her and took her down, her skull had cracked on the pavement, blood bloomed behind her head in a slick, dark halo and someone had shouldered past her spectral self to wrench the man away from her--

She had woken in a cold sweat and found her hand numb. She panicked and went to him, scrubbing tears from her eyes with her good hand, and knocked, and finally called for him, and guilt twisted her stomach when he clicked the light on and she found him with bleary eyes and mussed hair, but he patted the bed and showed her the same patient tenderness he had earlier, and Daphne decided that he must be a very good detective, because he could read the anxiety rolling off of her and offered to let her stay.

And she was dumb enough to accept, because she was scared of her own head and couldn’t remember the last time she’d shared a bed with someone else, and while he _did_ put a move on her, it wasn’t a _move_ so much as it was an invitation, and she was--again--dumb enough to accept because he was warm and he’d already been so nice to her, and she had felt more lonely in that split second of hesitation than in the months of trying to settle in South Reach. And it was _nice._ And she swore she could feel the same loneliness in him, but it was enough for both of them to simply exist together and breathe each other in. It was something she hadn’t experienced in years, and thinking about it for too long makes her heart stutter and her throat constrict, so Daphne finds herself focusing on Cullen instead; the steady rise and fall of his chest, the warm skin under her hand, the solid tattoo of his heart beating under her cheek.

She feels guilty for dreaming of Thomas and waking to Cullen, and she wonders if that’s why she’d conjured him in the first place; is she seeking some sort of absolution so she can properly _feel_ for Cullen without that guilty twist in her chest? Is there some part of her that misses Thomas?

The phone rings for a third time and she shelves her problems for later. With a huff she rolls over and snatches the phone from the nightstand in one motion, swiping to accept the call and taking half a breath to compose her voice into something semi-polite.

“Hello?”

Whoever is on the other line pauses momentarily before answering. “Er. Morning. Could I talk to Cullen?” A woman’s voice, low and smoky, and distinctly amused.

Daphne wonders who in the hell would be calling her and asking for Cullen before remembering that she hadn’t brought her phone in last night. Her cheeks erupt into fire. “He’s… asleep,” Daphne says softly, mortified.

“This is important,” the woman insists. “He can be mad at _me_ for waking him up.” Daphne looks over at Cullen, who is _still_ asleep on his back, the arm previously holding her splayed out into her side of the bed. “ _Please,_ ” the woman says again, and this time the crisp casual tone of her voice is replaced with urgency. “Tell him it’s Hawke.”

“Hang on,” she says after chewing the inside of her cheek. She mutes the call and her left hand freezes in mid-air, unsure of how to wake him. “Cullen,” she says in a normal volume.

He doesn’t budge. She places her hand on his outstretched arm, shaking it slightly, and he stirs, so she rubs his forearm slightly until he opens his eyes and fixes her with a confused look.

She holds his phone between them. “I answered your phone because I thought it was mine,” she says, face twisted with contrition. His head falls onto the pillow and he scrubs his face. “It’s someone called Hawke? She says it’s--”

Cullen bolts upright and grabs the phone from her hand with enough force to make her wince, deselecting the mute button and finding his voice quickly.

“Hawke?” he asks, voice hoarse with sleep but still sharp. He runs a hand through his mussed hair and Daphne is pleased to find that his hair curls naturally. “Well it’s _Saturday,_ what did you--” he throws his legs over the edge of the bed and rises, a knee cracking as he stands, and Daphne is treated to the length of his bare legs as he strides to the dresser with purpose. This isn’t quite the lazy morning she’d secretly been hoping for, and there’s no point in trying to go back to sleep, so she rises as well, lifting her arms above her head and stretching her spine to a symphony of pops and a singular, silent yawn so deep it makes her eyes water. She catches Cullen staring with the phone trapped between his shoulder and ear and a pair of sweatpants half on, and it’s at that point that Daphne remembers she isn’t wearing shorts.

The pair blush furiously and Cullen pulls his pants up with fervor as Daphne escapes to her room to find clothes.

She finds the shorts she wore earlier last night and runs a brush through her hair, trying hard not to think about this Hawke woman with the sultry voice and the speed with which Cullen snapped to attention when Daphne mentioned her name. She reminds herself that she has no reason to be jealous, despite whatever had happened between them last night.

She still can’t figure it out. True, she finds Cullen more handsome than is healthy, and _yes,_ she’s thought about him in… certain ways that would make a chanter blush, but nothing about last night was sexual or romantic. It was more intimate than that; it was careful and quiet and charged with some sort of emotion that was too big to make room for sex or romance, and she was fine with that. What she isn’t okay with, now in the cold light of day, is how welcome that feeling had been at the time and how bothered she is by trying to put a finger on what had transpired between them.

And then there’s her dream. That only adds another messy layer of feelings to sort through. 

She ventures into the kitchen for tea and toast, finding Cullen filling Jim’s food and water while still on the phone. “Wait, what do you mean, where are you if not--” Jim is underfoot, tail wagging away and awaiting his leash so he can do his morning business.

He glances at her and she holds a tin of earl grey aloft in a silent question. He nods and mouths _‘please_ ’ to her as he hooks a leash onto Jim’s collar, allowing the eager retriever to pull him out the door, and the apartment is silent. Daphne debates streaming some music through the sound system, but she’d just have to turn it off when Cullen comes back if he’s still talking to _Hawke,_ so she opts to put the kettle on and open the blinds in the living room.

She sits at the counter and inspects her hand. Tight and sore, bruised a purplish blue and still slightly swollen, but the cuts from her ring have closed and are only a little itchy. It could be worse. She brushes away the vision of her own body at her feet, blood pooling beneath her head. The door opens with bluster as a flurry of paws on hardwood and quiet speech pull her from dark thoughts. Cullen unclips the leash and reaches for the biscuit tin on the counter. Jim watches attentively, eyes fixated on the treat in his human’s hand, tail wagging furiously. Still preoccupied with his conversation, Cullen brings the hand holding the biscuit to his shoulder and Jim sits. The hand falls to his hip and Jim lies down, snapping the treat out of the air as Cullen tosses it to him after completing his commands.

The kettle whistles and Daphne moves to stand, but Cullen beats her to the stove and turns it off, reaching for the mugs and pouring hot water over prepared bags. He slides Daphne the blue mug and turns to grab the honey from the cupboard, but holds it hostage as Hawke clearly says something that displeases him.

“Norah,” he says in a warning tone. Daphne dunks her tea bag and strains to hear anything on the receiver beyond unintelligible feminine muttering, but she can’t make anything out. She plops the tea bag into the sink. Suddenly remembering that he has the honey in his hand, Cullen slides it across the counter to her before pinching the bridge of his nose. “Norah, I’ve already--”

“ _\--good can come from it, Cullen.”_

Daphne stirs honey into her tea and chases the frown from her face.

“You can’t just--”

The call disconnects and Cullen looks very much like he’s about to throw his phone across the kitchen. He stares down at it with a heavy brow before sighing and tossing it onto the counter with a clatter.

“Morning,” Daphne says casually over the rim of her mug.

“Morning,” he parrots sourly, tossing his tea bag into the sink and standing across from her.

“Friend of yours?” she asks. He eyes her carefully before speaking.

“A contact,” he says. “From Kirkwall.” Daphne hums into her tea and takes a careful sip. “How’s your hand?” he asks suddenly.

“Sore,” she says. “I think I slept on it.”

Cullen’s cheeks flush slightly and he stares into the depths of his mug with interest. She wonders if or when they’ll acknowledge last night. She also wonders if he felt the same sort of kismet that she had.

“Ice it a bit and I’ll wrap it.”

“Yes, sir.”

She accepts the ice pack he pulls from the freezer and balances it on top of her right hand as he disappears down the hall, returning momentarily with a shirt on and a tan bandage roll. Cullen slides into the stool next to hers and swivels to face her, removing the ice pack and helping himself to her hand.

“Did you keep your wrist straight?” he asks, testing her range of motion. “When you punched him, that is.”

Daphne swallows her sip and shrugs. “I don’t remember. I was reacting to being grabbed by someone I didn’t know and didn’t _want_ to know.”

“Fair,” he says. “It looks better. I’ll wrap it anyway, but you should be fine by Monday. Do you work tomorrow?”

She shakes her head, but he’s too preoccupied with her hand to notice, so she adds, “nope.”

He hums to himself and partially unrolls the bandage. “Face me.” She swivels in her stool until their knees are touching. “Hand up, palm to your face,” he instructs, demonstrating what he wants her to do with his own arm. She copies him and leans her left elbow on the counter, chin balanced upon a fist.

“Your brother seems nice,” she says conversationally. Cullen snorts.

“He has his moments.” He rests the end of the bandage in her palm and she moves her thumb to hold it in place.

“Do all your siblings bear such a striking resemblance to each other?”

“We don’t all look like each other,” he starts, winding the bandage around her hand, “but we all look related. Some shade of blond hair with some sort of wave pattern. My younger sister has the curliest hair of all of us.”

Daphne hums. “My sisters convinced me I was adopted for about six months.”

Cullen laughs under his breath and unwinds a mistake he’d made across her knuckles. “You said before you look like your father?”

“What little girl wants to be told she looks like a grown man?” she says defensively, her growing smile betraying her. “All I cared about was that I had mud hair and frog eyes.”

Cullen’s smile settles into something fond that makes her heart flutter and his eyes flicker past her knuckles to look at her. “Frog eyes?” he asks, and she nods grimly. “That’s cruel.” He reaches for a safety pin and extends her arm between them, her fingers brushing his chest as he leans over to guide the pin through the bandage without stabbing her. He fastens the pin and slides two fingers into the bandage along her forearm, and turns her hand over to the the same along her knuckles.

“Regina called me Toad for ages.”

“Well, I sat on my sister for an hour because she hid my train set all over the house, so I can’t claim to be a better sibling.” Daphne laughs and he allows her to take her hand back. “Don’t wear that for any longer than a few hours,” he warns. “And if it starts to go numb, take it off immediately.”

Daphne rests her wrapped hand in her lap and shifts, her knees brushing against Cullen’s. “Thank you,” she says, most of the levity gone from her voice. She swallows down some courage and her good hand finds one of his resting on the counter. “For everything.”

Cullen tries a smile that doesn’t fully form and looks at her hand covering his. His thumb brushes across hers idly as he bobs his head in a nod. “Of course.”

His phone rings again and he stands with a long-suffering sigh collapsing out of his lungs. Daphne picks up her cooling tea and takes a sip, willing it to heat from its proximity to her burning cheeks as she hides behind the mug.

“Rylen,” Cullen says as he answers the phone, voice crisp and professional. Whatever connection they’d established is severed in the air between them.

Thomas paces the living room behind her eyelids, a frown marring his handsome face.

_“You didn’t have to end it.”_


	7. A Day (or Five) in the Life

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> We follow Cullen's work week as it goes from bad to worse, with a few threads of confusing but not altogether unwelcome strewn throughout.

**_Monday_ **

He’s down in the morgue with Lace, standing over the body of George McDermott, the college student they’d suspected died of a red lyrium overdose. The medical examiner warns the pair not to get too close before pulling a drape back, exposing the open chest cavity. Formaldehyde and lyrium waft upward as the drape settles against the body’s lower half and Cullen blinks rapidly to rid himself of the sudden dizziness. Beside him, Lace turns her nose into her shoulder and shifts her weight between feet.

“Okay, so what’s new?” 

The medical examiner, a dwarf by the name of Kian, sighs, reaches a gloved hand into the chest cavity, and pulls out George McDermott’s crystallized heart. 

Cullen bends his knees and closes his eyes momentarily to steady himself. Harding swears under her breath. “That’s… is that--?” she stutters, and Cullen forces his eyes open.

“Red lyrium. Completely encased his heart.” Kian says. He places it back inside the chest cavity with care. “Look inside.” He angles his overhead light to the side to illuminate his lungs and rib cage, both of which are almost completely coated in red rock, glinting in the light and almost reverberating with a sour sort of melody that sets Cullen on edge. 

“You did the autopsy weeks ago,” Cullen says grimly, not daring to look anywhere but the body’s waxy face, eyes sunken and lips cracked. No outward sign of anything happening within his body. “How is it growing without a life source?” 

Kian shrugs. “Your guess is as good as mine,” he says, visibly distressed. “I’m a  _ dwarf.  _ I have more than a basic grasp on the properties of lyrium, you know, but this?” he gestures to the open chest cavity, “this is way above my pay grade.” 

“Who  _ do  _ we tell about this?” Kian asks after watching the two detectives in tense silence. Cullen glances over at Harding, whose lips are set in a thin line, freckles vibrant against skin paler than usual. 

“Keep the investigation open until we can bring someone in,” Harding says atonally, eyes distant. “There’s no way we can turn his body over to next of kin in this condition.” She sighs and tucks an escaped strand of hair behind her ear. Somehow her usually immaculate bun is frazzled. “If this is all you needed us for, I have some calls to make.” She excuses herself and turns on her heel, leaving the door swinging in her wake.

“Quarantine the body,” Cullen says after the air settles. “And… Kian.” 

He adjusts the sheet over McDermott’s body and looks up at Cullen. 

“How did you… how did you think to check the body weeks after the autopsy?”

Kian removes his gloves and scrubs the side of his face. “You’re ex-military, right?” Cullen nods. “Templar?” Another nod, and he continues, “So you know about how lyrium is… alive. What are you feeling right now?”

Cullen exhales hard through his nose. “Wrong,” he finally says. “It sounds… sour. Tainted, even.” 

“I was going with rotten, but tainted works too. It was gradual at first. I was feeling a little on edge, you know, and I thought it was just the long hours. But I’ve been forgetting things. Misplacing tools, mishearing people. I think the more it grew, the more I could…  _ hear it. _ I was paranoid enough to follow the song to the cold chambers and singled him out, since, well… he’s my only body right now anyway. 

“I got some air and came back and cracked him open again, and… called you as soon as I confirmed it, as you’re the primary on the case.” 

Cullen swallows the dull panic building in his throat as Kian’s symptoms corroborate with his own secondhand experience with red lyrium exposure. “Thanks, man.” He steps away from the body and breathes in untainted air. “You should finish up with him and take a few days off. Clear your head.” 

Kian’s brow furrows. “The captain won’t--”

“I’ll deal with him. Take the rest of the week.”

Kian nods, more to himself than to Cullen, and Cullen leaves him as he reaches for his box of gloves. 

By the time he gets home, he’s so exhausted from dealing with the captain’s ire and Lace’s cryptic silence that he’s ready to fall over. He opens the front door to the usual ceremony, but Jim is quick to catch onto his mood and heels almost immediately, keeping his body pressed close to Cullen’s leg and head-butting his hand for attention. Cullen absently scratches behind the dog’s ears as he investigates the smells emanating from the kitchen. 

“Hey,” comes Daphne’s voice from down the hallway. She emerges from the bathroom with an ice pack on her hand. “I cooked. Lemon chicken something with vegetable whatever. I made a bunch, so…” she trails off and flaps her good hand at the food resting on the stovetop.

Cullen smiles faintly, but declines: “I ate at the station.” It’s a lie, but his brain has conjured the image of cutting into a chicken breast to reveal a vein of red lyrium, and his stomach turns over. “But I’ll take some for lunch,” he says in the face of Daphne’s vague disappointment. She shrugs and reaches for a glass of water, popping a painkiller into her mouth and swallowing it down. “How’s your hand?”

“It was fine, but then I had to use it all day and it hurts again. How was work?”

He shakes his head to dislodge George McDermott’s sunken eyes and cracked lips. “Boring. Same small-town stuff.” 

He helps her clean the kitchen and store the leftovers in the fridge, clinging to the domesticity of the action as if he could ignore the fact that he has red lyrium growing inside a dead body, as if pretending hard enough would make his problems go away. He half expects that he’ll be able to snuggle up on the couch with a movie or bad medical drama on the television, but the blood rushing behind his ears and the dry, constricted feeling in his throat is choking him to the point that he excuses himself as soon as the dishwasher is running. He collapses onto the bed. His next dose isn’t until the end of the week--he dreads the euphoria in the same breath that he longs for it, the hand wrapped tight around his throat that leashes him to the one thing he can’t shake from the Order, the only thing left that still owns him--

He knows where it is. The joints in his fingers vibrate with the compulsion to drag the box out of its corner in his closet. He stares across the floor and imagines a blue glow spilling out from behind his closed closet door, beckoning him. 

Taunting him. 

Jim whines and jumps onto the bed without waiting for permission, walking over Cullen’s stomach with disregard and curling up at his side. He nudges a hand until Cullen rolls onto his side and spoons him, rubbing Jim’s belly and burying his face in his golden fur. He breathes in. 

Jim needs a bath. But it’s enough to ground him. 

**_Tuesday_ **

He does take Daphne’s leftovers for lunch, and despite the fact that anything he puts into his mouth tastes like cardboard, he texts her to say it was delicious and thanks her for cooking. She sends back a smiley face and asks him to bring home a bottle of wine. 

Hawke calls again from a different phone number and warns him once more to stay away from the McDermott case. He’d tried to tell her about the body growing red lyrium inside it and gotten a lecture instead. He has no way of knowing if Rylen’s people had bothered to check the bodies in Kirkwall and he can’t get in touch with him to warn him, and his preliminary research into Hawke’s problems in Denerim has revealed next to nothing.

He supposes all he can do is wait for Harding’s connections to come through and keep digging into  _ how  _ McDermott got his hands on red lyrium in the first place with no prior service record and no known templar associations. He’s the outlier in the case, as far as Rylen’s bodies are concerned, as McDermott’s the only civilian of the four. He’d checked rehab clinics, crisis centers, homeless shelters--and nobody had heard of red lyrium beyond the whispers of it coming out of Kirkwall. 

Scoffing, Cullen pulls out his personal phone. 

_ Message to: Daphne _ _   
_ _ >> What kind of wine am I picking up?  _

**< < !!!** **  
** **< < I was definitely kidding!**

_ >> Oh, so no wine? Okay _

**< < Now hang on** **  
** **< < what do -you- like?**

_ >> I’m asking the questions here _

**< < Ugh! Malbec is good** **  
** **< < Or chardonnay. Whatever’s cheaper honestly :) ** **  
** **< < Also I had leftovers so you’re on your own for dinner**

_ >> Wow, never mind. No wine  _

**< < :(((((**

Cullen comes home with a bottle of malbec and finds Daphne curled on the couch, streaming a show his sister keeps trying to get him to watch. He joins her on the couch with two glasses, not bothering to change out of his work clothes. That nostalgic sort of domesticity from yesterday settles over him as Daphne catches him up on the current plot thread of the show, and together they drain the bottle of wine and finish the season. She opts for a movie in lieu of starting the next season, and somewhere along the line her feet end up in Cullen’s lap, and he lets his thumb drum idly against her ankle bone.

He wonders if this is the life he could have had if he hadn’t joined the Order straight out of school; if he’d gone to university immediately and become a history teacher like Mia suggested. Would he have met a girl and settled down? Would he be watching a sweeping period drama that may or may not turn into a musical with a pair of feet in his lap, a wine-soaked brain and a dozing dog at his feet?

Well, he’d have a dog regardless. 

He’s not sure when he falls asleep on the couch with her, but when he wakes with a start, the lights are still on and the television is streaming a different movie. He finds himself stretched out along her legs, her feet somehow wedged between his knees, his cheek pressed into the swell of her hip and his arm all but cradling her thighs. Daphne’s hand--the one that isn’t trapped between her cheek and the armrest--is curled against the back of his neck, fingers half-tucked into the collar of his shirt. 

Cullen stays longer than he thinks he should, the film’s score and Daphne’s slow breaths lulling him into a half-slumber, but he remembers that they have work in the morning. He pushes himself up and removes Daphne’s feet from his lap. The motion of her hand falling from his shoulder is enough to rouse her, because her eyes blink open and she stretches through a yawn. 

“Aww,” she whines, checking the television. “I didn’t want to start this one yet.” 

Cullen chuckles and turns the television off. “It’s not like it’ll disappear tomorrow.”

She pulls a face at him and pats Jim’s head when he comes around and puts his face in her lap. Neither of them acknowledge the couch nap they just shared. 

They turn off lights and deposit glasses into the sink together, bidding each other goodnight in the hallway. 

Cullen rubs the back of his neck; he swears it’s warmer from where her hand had rested. 

**_Wednesday_ **

Wednesday passes with nothing to show for it.

Neither Hawke nor Rylen will answer his calls. Harding’s leads have gone cold. A low-pressure system from the north sweeps through, bringing with it churning winds and storm clouds about as black as his mood. 

The station is quiet, as half the precinct has responded to a major accident near the university that’s forced them to reroute traffic for hours. He’ll later learn that there were two fatalities. 

He processes a shoplifter and helps the temp digitize case files, taking smoke breaks in between bouts of storms; the nicotine does little to calm the shake in his hand. Two more days until his next dose. 

He wonders when he’ll stop counting the days between them. He hates himself for craving it. A small voice in the back of his head warns him that he’ll never stop. 

He gives up and goes home early. Jim is hiding in the bathroom, his usual safe space when it’s storming, and Daphne is staring at a kettle warming on the stovetop with wet hair and a vacant look. She doesn’t greet him. She doesn’t respond when he tiredly says hello. 

He knows that dead-eyed look. He’s seen it on templars pushed too far; he’s seen it in the mirror on himself. One hand is fisted in the shirt over her chest, as if it’s the only thing keeping her heart in place, and the other rubs idly at the feather tattoo on her thigh.

He has an idea. But it’s not his place to pry. 

The kettle whistles while he changes into drier clothes. When he returns, her door is closed and the kitchen light is off. 

Cullen doesn’t see her for the rest of the night. 

**_Thursday_ **

Thursday follows much the same as Wednesday had, though the rain has been chased away by a bitter chill. Winter will set in soon enough, and with it will come more accidents; carbon monoxide poisoning, traffic hazards, downed trees and power lines. 

Most of Cullen’s day is occupied by the aftermath of the car accident. Because of the proximity to campus, they’ve opened an investigation. He takes witness statements and leads a family to the morgue to identify one of the victims. McDermott’s body has been moved, but the air in the morgue still feels tainted. Kian is still on leave. He’s only half-present as he offers his condolences to the bereaved family. 

During a briefing, another detective argues that they should bring in an investigator better equipped to handle major motor vehicle accidents, but the captain claims the city doesn’t have the proper resources. Cullen spends his afternoon tracking down and requesting footage from nearby security cameras. Harding orders them a pizza to split. She’s as worn down by the McDermott case as he is, and she responds by throwing the rest of her energy into this accident. None of the witness footage is of the accident itself, but of the aftermath. One driver tries to flee the scene on foot but a pedestrian tackles him to the ground; a good samaritan drags a passenger out of a car and potentially exacerbates a spinal injury--any personal injury lawyer worth their salt would subpoena  _ that  _ footage immediately. 

Rylen finally reaches out in the evening--his message is dismissive and vague, but it sounds enough like Rylen to put Cullen at ease. He decides to give up on Hawke. She goes dark so often that he was lucky to have even gotten the conversations he did. 

Harding physically drags Cullen’s chair away from a desk and demands he go home. Camera footage from the city won’t come until the morning, and the privately owned ones are refusing to hand anything over without a warrant. 

It’s past ten when he finally gets home. Daphne is stretched out on the couch, face-down and asleep, her hand resting on top of an open book. Cullen wonders if she’d tried to stay up and wait for him, and the thought of that sends some kind of yearning tumbling into his stomach. He picks up the book, spine labeled with a call number, and sticks the date card into the page. He should wake her up, shouldn’t he? He’s slept a whole night on this couch before, and it’s not the  _ worst,  _ but it’s certainly not ideal.

He crouches down and places a gentle hand between her shoulder blades, rubbing slightly. Her nose wrinkles and she blinks her eyes open, staring blankly through him until she gets her bearings. 

“It’s late,” he says softly. “You should go to bed.” She mumbles something into the couch cushion and he smiles slightly; her post-nap grumpiness is endearing. “What was that?”

“I said help me.” 

He laughs under his breath and watches Daphne push herself up to a sitting position, taking her hands when she reaches for him. She wobbles and leans against him, yawning silently into his shoulder. That yearning feeling intensifies. He keeps her hands in his. He gauges her height; her forehead comes to his mouth. He’d only have to turn his head an inch to brush the outer shell of her ear. 

“Carry me,” she mumbles into his collar bone, sagging against him. He swallows the lump building in his throat and acquiesces, dipping to hook an arm around her knees and carry her to her room. He toes the door open and manages to turn the ceiling light on with his elbow, which causes Daphne to whine and bury her face into his shoulder. He apologizes and deposits her carefully on the bed before getting the light. He’s at the door and about to leave when her sleepy voice cuts through the darkness. “You should stay.”

His heart hammers against his sternum, but he barely thinks before he hears himself answer. “Hang on.” He goes to his room to shed his work clothes and finds a t-shirt and flannel pants, turns the lights off in the main room, checks the locks on the door, and takes a rallying breath before opening Daphne’s door as silently as possible. She’s on her side, squinting at her phone, but she looks up when she hears the door click.

“I thought you’d ghosted,” she half-whispers, not daring to betray the silence. He huffs a nervous laugh, unwilling to admit that he considered staying in his room. He feels like a teenager sneaking in through a window. 

“Would you rather I had?” he asks as he slides under her comforter, and her only answer is to hold her arms out. He finds himself obliging, letting her arms come around him and guide his head to her shoulder, one hand sliding over his bicep and the other combing through his hair. She angles herself towards him as he breathes her in, his last conscious thought being that she smells like lavender and elderflower, and he is well and completely fucked. 

**_Friday_ **

He thinks he might have dreamt last night, something conjured by the toxic part of him that refuses to admit he might be lonely, but when he wakes, he finds himself staring at the wall of his second bedroom, a slim arm slung over his rib cage and the feeling of a soft body pressed into his back. 

Cullen can’t remember the last time he was little spoon. 

And Daphne does a good job of it, her thighs pressed against his, their feet tangled together, and her hand tucked against his chest. He stares down at her curled hand, wondering idly when she changed her nail polish from black to burgundy, when he feels her stir behind him. She buries her face between his shoulder blades and squeezes him, then hitches a leg over his hip. A few seconds pass, then he hears: “Hi.”

He laughs softly into the wall and she removes herself from him so he can turn to face her. “Hey,” he responds quietly. 

She wins the fight to keep her eyes open and they stare at each other for a moment. “Don’t you have work this morning?” he asks. Daphne sighs.

“I switched with someone so she could see her fiance in a play or something.” She rolls her eyes. “I go in at two. What about you?”

“Off today,” he says. “On all weekend.” She wrinkles her nose at him and he’s inclined to agree.

Cullen fights the urge to chase a lock of hair off her shoulder. It almost hurts to look at her in the soft glow of morning, with her mussed hair and lazily fluttering lashes, eyes a brighter green in the early light; and the wide collar of her shirt threatening to slide off her shoulder certainly isn’t doing him any favors. Nevertheless, he watches her watch him, wondering what conclusions of her own she’s drawing. 

Finally, he speaks. “What’s going on?” he asks, and her answering blush tells him that he doesn’t need to clarify. Daphne rolls onto her back and stares at the ceiling. 

“I don’t know,” she admits. She opens her mouth once, then bites the inside of her cheek, and then exhales. “I haven’t slept well this week. But I slept okay when you let me stay with you. And maybe it’s bad coping, but…”

“But?” he prompts after a moment of waiting.

“But it worked,” she says quietly. “And you stayed, so… so what are  _ you  _ doing here?”

It’s Cullen’s turn to flop onto his back. “I don’t know,” he parrots. He lifts his arms to put his hands behind his head, watching as Daphne sits up in bed and tucks her knees under her chin. 

It’s easy to forget his life around her. It’s easy to forget Hawke and McDermott, the car accident and the lyrium. It’s easy to pretend he’s a normal person with an easy life and a pretty girlfriend. 

She’s right. The two nights they happened to sleep together were the best sleeps in recent memory, and he’s loath to admit that a person and some physical contact could bring that kind of stillness to him. He’d never needed it before; why now? 

Why her?

He looks from the ceiling back at Daphne to find her watching him with a creased brow.

“What?”

She chews the inside of her cheek with pursed lips. Her mouth opens like she wants to say something, but then closes with a dull snap of teeth. “I think…” she starts, but trails off. She heaves a sigh and falls backward onto the bed, and Cullen pushes himself to a sitting position and grabs her wrist to hoist her back up. She collapses back against her knees and watches him carefully once more. “I think I might like you.”

Cullen can’t help the breathless chuckle that escapes him. “You think, huh?”

She shrugs helplessly and wraps her arms around her shins. He nudges her knee with his, drawing her gaze back to his. “It would be weird,” he starts, “if things ended up not working out.” 

“Because I technically rent from you and living together is at least step six of a relationship?”

“Well, yeah.” He pauses, and then asks, “Six steps?” Daphne huffs.

“Dating, sleeping together, meeting the friends, first trip away, meeting the parents, moving in,” she lists. 

“Well, my parents are dead,” he says dismissively, “so there’s half a step missing there. And this is twice we’ve technically slept together.” 

She glowers at him as if to say ‘ _ that’s not what I mean and you know it,’ _ but she doesn’t verbalize anything, and he’s not willing to entertain any ideas of  _ that _ during this particular conversation.

That’s not to say that he  _ hasn’t  _ entertained any ideas, because he  _ has,  _ but right now the timing is wrong. And the dynamic still needs to be smoothed out, because he still feels guilty fantasizing about his… tenant. 

He lies back down with a sigh, scrubbing his hand over his stubble. “I think I might like you too,” he finally says, realizing that he hadn’t actually said it back. Not for the first time concerning Daphne, he feels like a teenager again. He feels the bed shift and then feels a weight on his chest as Daphne rests her cheek against his solar plexus and curls into a ball at his side. His hand finds the back of her head and he absently sifts through strands of hair.

He absolutely doesn’t have time to devote to a relationship, but she’s right; nothing about the way this has gone has been conventional. At least finally admitting that there are feelings is a step in the right direction, and he has to remind himself that pacing is going to be different for everyone. It doesn’t have to progress as fast as the average; milestones are arbitrary. 

“I punched someone on our first date,” she says suddenly, morosely.

Cullen laughs. “I almost arrested someone.”

He feels her smile against him. 

His phone rings from the other room. Cullen sighs and Daphne rolls off and away from him, allowing him an opportunity to escape. It could be spam, he reasons, and he’d kick himself for getting out of bed just to hang up on a robo-caller.

Or it could be Hawke again. Or Harding. Or Cassandra.

That thought makes him frown and he finds himself slipping into the cool air of Daphne’s room, leaving her alone in a sea of puffy comforter. She curls around the pillow he’d slept on and buries her face in it, eyes closed and hair falling over her face, and Cullen’s chest aches. 

His phone goes silent, then begins ringing again. Daphne opens one eye and stares at him from behind her curtain of hair, commanding with an arched brow to go answer his phone so she can go back to sleep. 

He finds his phone on the coffee table in the living room, exactly where he’d left it last night when Daphne insisted he carry her to bed. Caller ID says it’s Harding, so he swipes the phone up and slides his thumb across to accept the call. He clears his throat to dislodge some of the sleep from his voice.

“This is Cullen,” he says, but Harding cuts him off with panic in her voice.

“You need to get to the station right now.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oops.

**Author's Note:**

> as always check me out on tumblr dot com at lonely-spaghetti.


End file.
